Stamped  below. 


ROMAIN  HOLLAND 


This  author’s  great  musical  novel 
appears  in  France  in  ten  volumes 
and  in  its  English  translation  in 
three  volumes  as  follows: 

JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 

DAWN  • MORNING  • YOUTH  • REVOLT 

JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 
IN  PARIS 

THE  MARKET-PLACE 
ANTOINETTE  THE  HOUSE 

JEAN-CHRISTOPHE: 

JOURNEY’S  END 

LOVE  AND  FRIENDSHIP 
THE  BURNING  BUSH  THE  NEW  DAWN 
Each^  translated  by  Gilbert  Cannan,  $1.75  net. 

HENRY  HOLT  AND  COMPANY 
PUBLISHERS  NEW  YORK 


/EAN  - CHEISTOPHE 

V 

DAWN  - MORNING 
YOUTH  REVOLT 


BY 

ROMAIN  ROLLAND 


Translated  by 

gilbert  cannan 


NEW  YORK 

HENRY  HOLT  AND  COMPANY 


1 lo 


PREFACE 

JeaN’Cbristophe^^  is  the  history  of  the  d&velopment  of  a 
Tiusician  of  genius.  | The  present  volume  comprises  the  first  four 
volumes  of  the  original  French,  viz.:  UAulef'  ''  Le  Matin/' 

^ U Adolescent/'  and  ''La  Revolte/'  which  are  designated  in 
the  translation  as  Part  I— The  Dawn;  Part  II— Morning; 
Part  III— Youth;  Part  IV— Revolt.  [Parts  I and  II  carry 
Jean-Christophe  from  the  moment  of  his  iirth  to  the  day  when, 
if  ter  his  first  encounter  with  Woman,  at  the  age  of  fifteen, 
he  falls  hack  upon  a Puritan  creed.\Parts  III  and  IV  describe 
the  succeeding  five  years  of  his  lif^ when,  at  the  age  of  twenty, 
his  sincerity,  integrity,  and  unswerving  honesty  have  made  ex- 
istence impossible  for  him  in  the  little  Rhine  towtc  of  his  birth. 
An  act  of  open  revolt  against  German  militarism  compels  him 
to  cross  the  frontier  and  take  refuge  in  Paris,  and  the  remainder 
of  this  vast  book  is  devoted  to  the  adventures  of  J ean-Christophe 
in  France. 

His  creator  has  said  that  he  has  always  conceived  and  thought 
of  the  life  of  his  hero  and  of  the  bgok  as  a river.  So  far  ds  the 
book  has  a plan,  that  is  its  plan,  (it  has  no  literary  artifice,  no 
"plot."  The  words  of  it  hang  together  in  defiance  of  syntax, 
just  as  the  thoughts  of  it  follow  one  on  the  other  in  defiance  of 
every  system  of  philosophy.  Every  phase  of  the  book  is  pregnant 
with  the  next  phase.  It  is  as  direct  and  simple  as  life  itself, 
for  life  is  simple  when  the  truth  of  it  is  known,  a^  it  was  known 
instinctively  by  Jean-Christophe.)  The  river  is  explored  as 
though  it  were  absolutely  uncharted.  {Nothing  that  has  evpr 
been  said  or  thought  of  life  is  accepted  without  being  brought 
to  the  test  of  J ean-Christophe's  own  life.)  What  is  not  true  for 
him  does  not  exist ;)and,  as  there  are  very  few  of  the  processes 
pf  human  growth  or  decay  which  are  not  analyzed,  there  is 
disclosed  to  the  reader  the  most  comprehensive  survey  of  modern 
life  which  has  appeared  in  literature  in  this  century. 

To  leave  M.  Rolland's  simile  of  the  river,  and  to  take  another, 

iii 

\ ' 


i 


IV 


PEEFACE 


the  boolc  has  seemed  to  me  liJce  a mighty  bridge  leading  from  the 
world  of  ideas  of  the  nineteenth  century  to  the  world  of  ideas  of 
the  twentieth.  The  whole  thought  of  the  nineteenth  century 
seems  to  be  gathered  together  to  make  the  starting-point  for 
J ean-Christophe' s leap  into  the  future.  All  that  was  most 
religious  in  that  thought  seems  to  be  concentrated  in  Jean- 
Christophe,  and  when  the  history  of  the  booh  is  traced,  it  appears 
that  M,  Rolland  has  it  by  direct  inheritance, 

M,  Rolland  was  born  in  1866  at  Clamecy,  in  the  center  of 
France,  of  a French  family  of  pure  descent,  and  educated  in 


Paris  and  Rome,  *^At  Rome,  in  1890,  he  met  Malwida  von 


Meysenburg,  a German  lady  who  had  taken  refuge  in  England 
after  the  Revolution  of  181^8,  and  there  knew  Kossuth,  Mazzini, 
Herzen,  Ledin,  Rollin,  and  Louis  Blanc,  Later,  in  Italy,  she 
counted  among  her  friends  Wagner,  Liszt,  Lenbach,  Nietzsche, 
Garibaldi,  and  Ibsen,  She  died  in  1903,  Rolland  came  to  her  i 
impregnated  with  Tolstoyan  ideas,  and  with  her  wide  knowledge  j 
of  men  and  movements  she  helped  him  to  discover  his  own  ideas,  ! 
In  her  Memoir es  d'une  Idealiste'"  she  wrote  of  him:  '' In  \ 
this  young  Frenchman  I discovered  the  same  idealism,  the  same  j 
lofty  aspiration,  the  same  profound  grasp  of  every  great  in- 
tellectual manifestation  that  I had  already  found  in  the  greatest  j 
men  of  other  nationalities,'^  j 

The  germ  of  ''  J ean-Christophe  " was  conceived  during  this  \ 
period — the  ''  Wander jahre  " — of  M,  Rolland' s life.  On  his  I 


return  to  Paris  he  became  associated  with  a movement  towards  < 


the  renascence  of  the  theatw  as  a social  machine,  and  wrote 


several  plays.  He  has  since  been  a musical  critic  and  a lecturer 
on  music  and  art  at  the  Sorbonne,  He  has  written  Lives  of 
Beethoven,  Michael  Angelo,  and  Hugo  Wolf,  Always  his  en- 
deavor has  been  the  pursuit  of  the  heroic.  To  him  the  great 
men  are  the  men  of  absolute  truth,  J ean-Christophe  must  have 
the  truth  and  tell  the  truth,  at  all  costs,  in  despite  of  circum- 
stance, in  despite  of  himself,  in  despite  even  of  life.  It  is  his^ 
law.  It  is  M,  Rolland's  law,  [The  struggle  all  through  the 
book  is  between  the  pure  life  of  J ean-Christophe  and  the  com- 
mon acceptance  of  the  second-rate  and  the  second-hand  by  the 
substitution  of  civic  or  social  morality,  which  is  only  a com- 
promise, for  individual  morality,  which  demands  that  every 


PEEFACE 


V 


ma7i  should  he  delivered  up  to  the  unswerving  judgment  of  his 
iwn  soul.  Everywhere  J ean-Christophe  is  hurled  against  com^ 
oromise  and  untruth,  individual  and  national,)  He  discovers 
the  German  lie  very  quichly;  the  French  lie  grimaces  at  him 
IS  soon  as  he  sets  foot  in  Paris, 

The  booh  itself  breaks  down  the  frontier  between  France  and 
Germany,  If  one  frontier  is  broken,  all  are  broken.  The  truth 
ibout  anything  is  universal  truth,  and  the  experiences  of  Jean- 
Christophe,  the  adventures  of  his  soul  ( there  are  no  other 
idventures),  are  in  a greater  or  less  degree  those  of  every  human 
being  who  passes  through  this  life  from  theHyranny  of  the  past 
to  the  service  of  the  future. 

The  book  contains  a host  of  characters  who  become  as  friends, 
or,  at  least,  as  interesting  neighbors,  to  the  reader,  -^J ean- 
Christophe  gathers  people  in  his  progress,  and  as  they  are  all 
brought  to  the  test  of  his  genius,  they  appear  clearly  for  what 
they  are.  Even  the  most  unpleasant  of  them  is  human,  and 
demands  sympathy,}^ 

The  recognition  of  J ean-Christophe  as  a book  which  marks 
% stage  in  progress  was  instantaneous  in  France,  It  is  hardly 
possible  yet  to  judge  it.  It  is  impossible  to  deny  its  vitality. 
It  exists,  Christophe  is  as  real  as  the  gentlemen  whose  por- 
traits are  posted  outside  the  Queen  s Hall,  and  much  more  real 
than  many  of  them.  The  book  clears  the  air.  An  open  mind 
coming  to  it  cannot  fail  to  be  refreshed  and  strengthened  by  its 
Voyage  down  the  river  of  a man^s  life,  and  if  the  book  is  followed 
to  its  end,  the  voyager  will  discover  with  Christophe  that  there 
js  joy  beneath  sorrow,  joy  through*  sorrow  Durch  Leiden 
freude 

I Those  are  the  last  words  of  M,  Rolland's  life  of  Beethoven; 
\hey  are  words  of  Beethoven  himself:  La  devise  de  tout  dme 
heroique,'^ 

In  his  preface,  To  the  Friends  of  Christophe/'  which  pre- 
pedes  the  seventh  volume,  Dans  la  Maison,"  M,  Rolland  writes: 
i ''I  was  isolated:  like  so  many  others  in  France  I was  stifling 
In  a world  morally  inimical  to  me:  I wanted  air:  I wanted  to  re- 
lict against  an  unhealthy  civilization,  against  ideas  corrupted  by  a 
Jiam  elite:  I wanted  to  say  to  them:  ^You  lie!  You  do  not 
Represent  France!'  To  dv  so  I needed  a hero  with  a pure  heart 


vi 


PEEFACE 


and  unclouded  vision,  whose  soul  would  he  stainless  enough  for 
him  to  have  the  right  to  speak;  one  whose  voice  would  he  loud 
enough  for  him  to  gain  a hearing.  I have  patiently  begotten 
this  hero.  The  work  was  in  conception  for  many  years  before 
I set  myself  to  write  a word  of  it.  Christophe  only  set  out  on 
his  journey  when  1 had  been  able  to  see  the  end  of  it  for  him.'' 

If  M.  Holland's  act  of  faith  in  writing  J ean-Christophe  were 
only  concerned  with  France,  if  the  polemic  of  it  were  not 
directed  against  a universal  evil,  there  would  be  no  reason  for 
translation.  But,  like  Zarathustra,  it  is  a book  for  all  and  none. 
M.  Rolland  has  written  tvhat  he  believes  to  be  the  truth,  and  as 
Dr.  Johnson  observed:  ''Every  man  has  a right  to  utter  what  he 
thinks  truth,  and  every  other  man  has  a right  to  knock  him 
down  for  it.  . . 

By  its  truth  and  its  absolute  integrity — since  Tolstoy  I know 
of  no  writing  so  crystal  clear — " J ean-Christophe  " is  the  first 
great  book  of  the  twentieth  century,  (in  a sense  it  begins  the 
twentieth  century.  It  bridges  transition,  and  shows  us  where 
we  stand.  It  reveals  the  past  and  the  present,  and  leaves  the 
future  open  to  us.  . . . j 


GILBERT  CA'NEAN. 


CONTENTS 


THE  DAWN 

PAGE 

I . 3 

II . 26 

III 68 

MORNING 

I.  The  Death  of  Jean  Michel  .....  107 

II.  Otto 141 

III.  Minna 166 

YOUTH 

I.  The  House  of  Eulee 215 

II.  Sabine  258 

III.  Ada  . 303 

REVOLT 

I.  Shifting  Sands 357 

II.  Engulfed 432 

TIL  Deliverance 509 


THE  DAWN 


Dianzi,  nelFalba  che  precede  al  giorno, 
Quando  ranima  tua  dentro  dormia.  . . . 

Purgatorio,  ix. 


JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 

b - 

I ,C  4 

Come,  quando  i vapori  umidi  e spessi 

A diradar  cominciansi,  la  spera 

Del  sol  debilemente  entra  per  essi.  . . . 

Purgatorio,  xvii. 

From  behind  the  house  rises  the  murmuring  of  the  river. 
All  day  long  the  rain  has  been  beating  against  the  window- 
panes;  a stream  of  water  trickles  down  the  window  at  the 
corner  where  it  is  broken.  The  yellowish  light  of  the  day  dies 
down.  The  room  is  dim  and  dull. 

The  new-born  child  stirs  in  his  cradle.  Although  the  old 
man  left  his  sabots  at  the  door  when  he  entered,  his  footsteps 
make  the  floor  creak.  The  child  begins  to  whine.  The  mother 
‘ leans  out  of  her  bed  to  comfort  it;  and  the  grandfather  gropes 
to  light  the  lamp,  so  that  the  child  shall  not  be  frightened  by 
the  night  when  he  awakes.  The  flame  of  the  lamp  lights  up 
old  Jean  MicheFs  red  face,  with  its  rough  white  beard  and 
morose  expression  and  quick  eyes.  He  goes  near  the  cradle. 
His  cloak  smells  wet,  and  as  he  walks  he  drags  his  large  blue 
list  slippers.  Louisa  signs  to  him  not  to  go  too  near.  She 
is  fair,  almost  white ; her  features  are  drawn ; her  gentle,  stupid 
face  is  marked  with  red  in  patches;  her  lips  are  pale  and 
i swollen,  and  they  are  parted  in  a timid  smile;  her  eyes  devour 
the  child — and  her  eyes  are  blue  and  vague;  the  pupils  are 
small,  but  there  , is  an  infinite  tenderness  in  them. 

The  child  wakes  and  cries,  and  his  eyes  are  troubled.  Oh! 
how  terrible!  The  darkness,  the  sudden  flash  of  the  lamp, 
? the  hallucinations  of  a mind  as  yet  hardly  detached  from  chaos, 
the  stifling,  roaring  night  in  which  it  is  enveloped,  the  illimita- 
ble gloom  from  which,  like  blinding  shafts  of  light,  there 
emerge  acute  sensations,  sorrows,  phantoms — those  enormous 


4 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


faces  leaning  over  him,  those  eyes  that  pierce  through  him, 
penetrating,  are  beyond  his  comprehension ! ...  He  has  not 
the  strength  to  cry  out;  terror  holds  him  motionless,  with  eyes 
and  mouth  wide  open  and  he  rattles  in  his  throat.  His  large 
head,  that  seems  to  have  swollen  up,  is  wrinkled  with  the 
grotesque  and  lamentable  grimaces  that  he  makes;  the  skin  of 
his  face  and  hands  is  brown  and  purple,  and  spotted  with 
yellow.  . . . 

Dear  God ! said  the  old  man  with  conviction : How  ugly 
he  is ! ” 

He  put  the  lamp  down  on  the  table, 

Louisa  pouted  like  a scolded  child.  Jean  Michel  looked  at 
her  out  of  the  corner  of  his  eye  and  laughed. 

^^You  don’t  want  me  to  say  that  he  is  beautiful?  You 
would  not  believe  it.  Come,  it  is  not  your  fault.  They  are 
all  like  that.” 

The  child  came  out  of  the  stupor  and  immobility  into  which 
he  had  been  thrown  by  the  light  of  the  lamp  and  the  eyes  of 
the  old  man.  He  began  to  cry.  Perhaps  he  instinctively  felt 
in  his  mother’s  eyes  a caress  which  made  it  possible  for  him 
to  complain.  She  held  out  her  arms  for  him  and  said : 

Give  him  to  me.” 

The  old  man  began,  as  usual,  ^toairjyg^ 

. ^^You  ought  not  to  give  wayTo”"^ildren  when  they  cry. 
1^  You  must  just  let  them  cry.” 

But  he  came  and  took  the  child  and  grumbled: 
never  saw  one  quite  so  ugly.” 

Louisa  took  the  child  feverishly  and  pressed  it  to  her  bosom. 
She  looked  at  it  with  a bashful  and  delighted  smile. 

^^Oh,  my  poor  child!”  she  said  shamefacedly.  ^^How  ugly 
you  are — ^how  ugly ! and  how  I love  you ! ” 

Jean  Michel  went  back  to  the  fireside.  He  began  to  poke 
the  fire  in  protest,  but  a smile  gave  the  lie  to  the  moroseness 
and  solemnity  of  his  expression. 

Good  girl ! ” he  said.  Don’t  worry  about  it.  He  has 
plenty  of  time  to  alter.  And  even  so,  what  does  it  matter? 
Only  one  thing  is  asked  of  him:  that  he  should  grow  into  an 
^ honest  man.” 

The  child  was  comforted  by  contact  with  his  mother’s  warm 


THE  DAWN 


5 


body.  He  could  be  heard  sucking  her  milk  and  gurgling  and 
snorting.  Jean  Michel  turned  in  his  chair,  and  said  once  more, 
with  some  emphasis: 

There^s  nothing  finer  than  an  honest  man.^^ 

He  was  silent  for  a moment,  pondering  whether  it  would 
not  be  proper  to  elaborate  this  thought;  but  he  found  nothing 
more  to  say,  and  after  a silence  he  said  irritably: 

Why  isn’t  your  husband  here  ? ” 

I think  he  is  at  the  theater,”  said  Louisa  timidly.  There 
is  a rehearsal.” 

The  theater  is  closed.  I passed  it  just  now.  One  of  his 
lies.” 

^^No.  Don’t  be  always  blaming  him.  I must  have  mis- 
understood. He  must  have  been  kept  for  one  of  his  lessons.” 

He  ought  to  have  come  back,”  said  the  old  man,  not  satis- 
fied. He  stopped  for  a moment,  and  then  asked,  in  a rather 
lower  voice  and  with  some  shame : 

Has  he  been  . . . again  ? ” 

No,  father — no,  father,”  said  Louisa  hurriedly. 

The  old  man  looked  at  her;  she  avoided  his  eyes. 

It’s  not  true.  You’re  lying.” 

She  wept  in  silence. 

Dear  God ! ” said  the  old  man,  kicking  at  the  fire  with 
his  foot.  The  poker  fell  with  a clatter.  The  mother  and  the 
child  trembled. 

Father,  please — please!”  said  Louisa.  ^^You  will  make 
him  cry.” 

The  child  hesitated  for  a second  or  two  whether  to  cry  or 
to  go  on  with  his  meal;  but  not  being  able  to  do  both  at  once, 
he  went  on  with  the  meal. 

Jean  Michel  continued  in  a lower  tone,  though  with  outbursts 
of  anger: 

What  have  I done  to  the  good  God  to  have  this  drunkard 
for  my  son?  What  is  the  use  of  my  having  lived  as  I have 
lived,  and  of  having  denied  myself  everything  all  my  life! 
But  you — you — can’t  you  do  anything  to  stop  it?  Heavens! 
That’s  what  you  ought  to  do.  . . . You  should  keep  him  at 
home!  . . .” 

Louisa  wept  still  more. 


6 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


/ 


Don’t  scold  me!  . . . I am  unhappy  enough  as  it  is!  I 
have  done  everything  I could.  If  you  knew  how  terrified  I 
am  when  I am  alone!  Always  I seem  to  hear  his  step  on  the 
stairs.  Then  I wait  for  the  door  to  open,  or  I ask  myself: 
^ 0 God ! what  will  he  look  like  ? ’ . . .It  makes  me  ill  to 
think  of  it ! ” 

She  was  shaken  by  her  sobs.  The  old  man  grew  anxious. 
He  went  to  her  and  laid  the  disheveled  bedclothes  about 
her  trembling  shoulders  and  caressed  her  head  with  his 
hands. 

Come,  come,  don’t  be  afraid.  I am  here.” 

She  calmed  herself  for  the  child’s  sake,  and  tried  to  smile, 
was  wrong  to  tell  you  that.” 

The  old  man  shook  his  head  as  he  looked  at  her. 

^^My  poor  child,  it  was  not  much  of  a present  that  I gave 
you.” 

It’s  my  own  fault,”  she  said.  He  ought  not  to  have 
married  me.  He  is  sorry  for  what  he  did.” 

What,  do  you  mean  that  he  regrets?  ...” 

You  know.  You  were  angry  yourself  because  I became 
his  wife.” 

We  won’t  talk  about  that.  It  is  true  I was  vexed.  A 
young  man  like  that — I can  say  so  without  hurting  you — a 
young  man  whom  I had  carefully  brought  up,  a distinguished 
musician,  a real  artist — might  have  looked  higher  than  you, 
who  had  nothing  and  were  of  a lower  class,  and  not  even  of 
the  same  trade.  For  more  than  a hundred  years  no  Krafft  has 
ever  married  a woman  who  was  not  a musician!  But,  you 
know,  I bear  you  no  grudge,  and  am  fond  of  you,  and  have  been 
ever  since  I learned  to  know  you.  Besides,  there’s  no  going 
back  on  a choice  once  it’s  made;  there’s  nothing  left  but  to  do 
one’s  duty  honestly.” 

He  went  and  sat  down  again,  thought  for  a little,  and  then 
said,  with  the  solemnity  in  which  he  invested  all  his  aphorisms : 
' The  first  thing  in  life  is  to  do  one’s  duty.” 
i He  waited  for  contradiction,  and  spat  on  the  fire.  Then, 
as  neither  mother  nor  child  raised  any  objection,  he  was  for  going 
on,  but  relapsed  into  silence. 


THE  DAWN 


7 


They  said  no  more.  Both  Jean  Michel,  sitting  by  the  fire- 
side, and  Louisa,  in  her  bed,  dreamed  sadly.  • The  old  man, 
in  spite  of  what  he  had  said,  had  bitter  thoughts  about  his  son’s 
marriage,  and  Louisa  was  thinking  of  it  also,,  and  blaming 
herself,  although  she  had  nothing  wherewith  to  reproach  herself. 

She  had  been  a servant  when,  to  everybody’s  surprise,  and 
her  own  especially,  she  married  Melchior  Krafft,  Jean  Michel’s 
son.  The  Krafits  were  without  fortune,  but  were  considerable 
people  in  the  little  Ehine  town  in  which  the  old  man  had 
settled  down  more  than  fifty  years  before.  Both  father  and 
son  were  musicians,  and  known  to  all  the  musicians  of  the 
country  from  Cologne  to  Mannheim.  Melchior  played  the  violin 
at  the  Hof-Theater,  and  Jean  Michel  had  formerly  been  director 
of  the  grand-ducal  concerts.  The  old  man  had  been  profoundly 
humiliated  by  his  son’s  marriage,  for  he  had  built  great  hopes 
upon  Melchior;  he  had  wished  to  make  him  the  distinguished 
man  which  he  had  failed  to  become  himself.  This  mad  freak 
destroyed  all  his  ambitions.  He  had  stormed  at  first,  and  show- 
ered curses  upon  Melchior  and  Louisa.  But,  being  a good- 
hearted  creature,  he  forgave  his  daughter-in-law  when  he  learned 
to  know  her  better;  and  he  even  came  by  a paternal  affection 
for  her,  which  showed  itself  for  the  most  part  in  snubs. 

No  one  ever  understood  what  it  was  that  drove  Melchior  to 
such  a marriage — least  of  all  Melchior.  It  was  certainly  not 
Louisa’s  beauty.  She  had  no  seductive  quality:  she  was  small, 
rather  pale,  and  delicate,  and  she  was  a striking  contrast  to 
Melchior  and  Jean  Michel,  who  were  both  big  and  broad,  red- 
faced giants,  heavy-handed,  hearty  eaters  and  drinkers,  laugh- 
ter-loving and  noisy.  She  seemed  to  be  crushed  by  them;  no 
one  noticed  her,  and  she  seemed  to  wish  to  escape  even  what 
little  notice  she  attracted.  If  Melchior  had  been  a kind-hearted 
man,  it  would  have  been  credible  that  he  should  prefer  Louisa’s 
simple  goodness  to  every  other  advantage;  but -a  vainer  man 
never  was.  It  seemed  incredible  that  a young  man  of  his 
kidney,  fairly  good-looking,  and  quite  conscious  of  it,  very 
foolish,  but  not  without  talent,  and  in  a position  to  look  for 
some  well-dowered  match,  and  capable  even — who  knows? — of 
turning  the  head  of  one  of  his  pupils  among  the  people  of  the 
town,  should  suddenly  have  chosen  a girl  of  the  people — poor, 


8 JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 

uneducated,  without  beauty,  a girl  who  could  in  no  way  advance 
his  career. 

But  Melchior  was  one  of  those  men  who  always  do  the  oppo- 
site of  what  is  expected  of  them  and  of  what  they  expect  of 
themselves.  It  is  not  that  they  are  not  warned — a man  who 
is  warned  is  worth  two  men,  says  the  proverb.  They  profess 
never  to  be  the  dupe  of  anything;  and  that  they  steer  their 
ship  with  unerring  hand  towards  a definite  point.  But  they 
reckon  without  themselves,  for  they  do  not  know  themselves. 
In  one  of  those  moments  of  forgetfulness  which  are  habitual 
with  them  they  let  go  the  tiller,  and,  as  is  natural  when  things 
are  left  to  themselves,  they  take  a naughty  pleasure  in  rounding 
on  their  masters.  The  ship  which  is  released  from  its  course 
at  once  strikes  a rock,  and  Melchior,  bent  upon  intrigue,  married 
a cook.  And  yet  he  was  neither  drunk  nor  in  a stupor  on 
the  day  when  he  bound  himself  to  her  for  life,  and  he  was 
not  under  any  passionate  impulse;  far  from  it.  But  perhaps 
there  are  in  us  forces  other  than  mind  and  heart,  other  even 
than  the  senses — mysterious  forces  which  take  hold  of  us  in 
the  moments  when  the  others  are  asleep ; and  perhaps  it  was 
such  forces  that  Melchior  had  found  in  the  depths  of  those  pale 
eyes  which  had  looked  at  him  so  timidly  one  evening  when 
he  had  accosted  the  girl  on  the  bank  of  the  river,  and  had  sat 
down,  beside  her  in  the  reeds — without  knowing  why — and  had 
given  her  his  hand. 

Hardly  was  he  married  than  he  was  appalled  by  what  he 
had  done,  and  he  did  not  hide  what  he  felt  from  poor  Louisa, 
who  humbly  asked  his  pardon.  He  was  not  a bad  fellow,  and 
he  willingly  granted  her  that;  but  immediately  remorse  would 
seize  him  again  when  he  was  with  his  friends  or  in  the  houses 
of  his  rich  pupils,  who  were  disdainful  in  their  treatment  of 
him,  and  no  longer  trembled  at  the  touch  of  his  hand  when  he 
Corrected  the  position  of  their  fingers  on  the  keyboard.  Then 
me  would  return  gloomy  of  countenance,  and  Louisa,  with  a 
f catch  at  her  heart,  would  read  in  it  with  the  first  glance  the 
/ customary  reproach  ; or  he  would  stay  out  late  at  one  inn  or 
another,  there  to  seek  self-respect  or  kindliness  from  others. 
On  such  evenings  he  would  return  shouting  with  laughter,  and 
this  was  more  doleful  for  Louisa  than  the  hidden  reproach 


THE  DAWN* 


9 


and  gloomy  rancor  that  prevailed  on  other  days.  She  felt 
that  she  was  to  a certain  extent  responsible  for  the  fits  of  mad- 
ness in  which  the  small  remnant  of  her  husband’s  sense  would 
disappear,  together  with  the  household  money.  Melchior  sank 
lower  and  lower.  At  an  age  when  he  should  have  been  engaged 
in  unceasing  toil  to  develop  his  mediocre  talent,  he  just  let 
things  slide,  and  others  took  his  place. 

But  what  did  that  matter  to  the  unknown  force  which  had 
thrown  him  in  with  the  little  flaxen-haired  servant?  He  had 
played  his  part,  and  little  Jean-Christophe  had  just  set  foot 
on  this  earth  whither  his  destiny  had  thrust  him. 


Night  was  fully  come.  Louisa’s  voice  roused  old  Jean  Michel 
from  the  torpor  into  which  he  had  sunk  by  the  fireside  as  he 
thought  of  the  sorrows  of  the  past  and  present. 

It  must  be  late,  father,”  said  the  young  woman  affection- 
ately. You  ought  to  go  home ; you  have  far  to  go.” 

I am  waiting  for  Melchior,”  replied  the  old  man. 

Please,  no.  I would  rather  you  did  not  stay.” 

^^Why?” 

The  old  man  raised  his  head  and  looked  fiercely  at  her. 

She  did  not  reply. 

He  resumed. 

^^You  are  afraid.  You  do  not  want  me  to  meet  him?” 

Yes,  yes;  it  would  only  make  things  worse.  You  would 
make  each  other  angry,  and  I don’t  want  that.  Please,  please 


go!” 

The  old  man  sighed,  rose,  and  said: 

Well  . . . I’ll  go.” 

I He  went  to  her  and  brushed  her  forehead  with  his  stiff  beard. 
He  asked  if  she  wanted  anything,  put  out  the  lamp,  and  went 
j stumbling  against  the  chairs  in  the  darkness  of  the  room.  But 
he  had  no  sooner  reached  the  staircase  than  he  thought  of  his 
son  returning  drunk,  and  he  stopped  at  each  step,  imagining 
a thousand  dangers  that  might  arise  if  Melchior  were  allowed 
to  return  alone.  . . . 

In  the  bed  by  his  mother’s  side  the  child  was  stirring  again. 
An  unknown  sorrow  had  arisen  from  the  depths  of  his  being, 
e stiff^ed  himself  against  her.  He  twisted  his  body,  clenched 


10 


JEAN'-CHEISTOPHE 


his  fists,  and  knitted  his  brows.  His  suffering  increased  steadily, 
quietly,  certain  of  its  strength.  He  knew  not  what  it  was, 
nor  whence  it  came.  It  appeared  immense, — infinite,  and 
he  began  to  cry  lamentably.  His  mother  caressed  him.  with 
her  gentle  hands.  Already  his  suffering  was  less  acute..  But 
he  went  on  weeping,  for  he  felt  it  still  near,  still  inside  himself. 
A man  who  suffers  can  lessen  his  anguish  by  knowing  whence 
it  comes.  By  thought  he  can  locate  it  in  a certain  portion  of 
^ his  body  which  can  be  cured,  or,  if  necessary,  torn  away.  He 
^ fixes  the  bounds  of  it,  and  separates  it  from  himself.  A child 
\|  has  no  such  illusive  resource.  His  first  encounter  with  suffering 
is  more  tragic  and  more  true.  Like  his  own  being,  it  seems 
infinite.  He  feels  that  it  is  seated  in  his  bosom,  housed  in  his 
heart,  and  is  mistress  of  his  flesh.  And  it  is  so.  It  will  not 
leave  his  body  until  it  has  eaten  it  away. 

> r His  mother  hugs  him  to  her,  murmuring:  It  is  done — it  is 
done!  Don’t  cry,  my  little  Jesus,  my  little  goldfish.  . . .” 
But  his  intermittent  outcry  continues.  It  is  as  though  this 
wretched,  unformed,  and  unconscious  mass  had  a presentiment 
of  a whole  life  of  sorrow  awaiting  him,  and  nothing  can  appease 
him.  . . . 


The  bells  of  St.  Martin  rang  out  in  the  night.  Their  voices 
are  solemn  and  slow.  In  the  damp  air  they  come  like  footsteps 
on  moss.  The  child  became  silent  in  the  middle  of  a sob.  The  i 
marvelous  music,  like  a flood  of  milk,  surged  sweetly  through  j 
him.  The  night  was  lit  up;  the  air  was  moi^t  and  tender.  ■ 
His  sorrow  disappeared,  his  heart  began  to  laugn  and  he  slid  ' 
into  his  dreams  with  a sigh  of  abandonment.  ^ 

The  three  bells  went  on  softly  ringing  in  the  morrow’s  festi- 
val. Louisa  also  dreamed,  as  she  listened  to  them,  of  her  owi/i 
past  misery  and  of  what  would  become  in  the  future  of  tliA 
dear  little  child  sleeping  by  her  side.  She  had  been  for  houi’sl 
lying  in  her  bed,  weary  and  suffering.  Her  hands  and  her  t 
body  were  burning;  the  heavy  eiderdown  crushed  her;  she  felt  \ 
crushed  and  oppressed  by  the  darkness;  but  she  dared  not  move. 
She  looked  at  the  child,  and  the  night  did  not  prevent  her  read- 
ing his  feature  3,  that  looked  so  old.  Sleep  overcame  her; 
fevered  images  passed  through  her  brain.  She  thought  sht 
heard  Melchior  open  the  door,  and  her  heart  leaped.  Occasion 


THE  DAWN 


11 


ally  the  murmuring  of  the  stream  rose  more  loudly  through 
the  silence,  like  the  roaring  of  some  beast.  The  window  once 
or  twice  gave  a sound  under  the  beating  of  the  rain.  The 
bells  rang  out  more  slowly,  and  then  died  down,  and  Louisa 
slept  by  the  side  of  her  child. 

All  this  time  Jean  Michel  was  waiting  outside  the  house, 
dripping  with  rain,  his  beard  wet  with  the  mist.  He  was 
waiting  for  the  return  of  his  wretched  son : for  his  mind,  never 
ceasing,  had  insisted  on  telling  him  all  sorts  of  tragedies  brought 
about  by  drunkenness;  and  although  he  did  not  believe  them, 
he  could  not  have  slept  a wink  if  he  had  gone  away  without 
having  seen  his  son  return.  The  sound  of  the  bells  made  him 
melancholy,  for  he  remembered  all  his  shattered  hopes.  He 
thought  of  what  he  was  doing  at  such  an  hour  in  the  street, 
and  for  very  shame  he  wept. 

The  vast  tide  of  the  days  moves  slowly.  Day  and  night 
come  up  and  go  down  with  unfailing  regularity,  like  the  ebb 
and  flow  of  an  inflnite  ocean.  Weeks  and  months  go  by,  and 
then  begin  again,  and  the  succession  of  days  is  like  one 
day. 

The  day  is  immense,  inscrutable,  marking  the  even  beat  of 
light  and  darkness,  and  the  beat  of  the  life  of  the  torpid  crea- 
ture dreaming  in  the  depths  of  his  cradle — his  imperious  needs, 
sorrowful  or  glad — so  regular  that  the  night  and  the  day  which 
bring  them  seem  by  them  to  be  brought  about. 

The  pendulum  of  life  moves  heavily,  cud  in  its  slow  beat  the 
whole  creature  seems  to  be  absorbed.  The  rest  is  no  more 
than  dreams,  snatches  of  dreams,  formless  and  swarming,  and 
dust  of  atoms  dancing  aimlessly,  a dizzy  whirl  passing,  and 
bringing  laughter  or  horror.  Outcry,  moving  shadows,  grin- 
ning shapes,  sorrows,  terrors,  laughter,  dreams,  dreams.  . . . 
All  is  a dream,  both  day  and  night.  . . . And  in  such  chaos  the 
light  of  friendly  eyes  that  smile  upon  him,  the  flood  of  joy 
that  surges  through  his  body  from  his  mother’s  body,  from  her 
breasts  filled  with  milk— the  force  that  is  in  him,  the  immense, 
unconscious  force  gathering  in  him,  the  turbulent  ocean  roaring 
in  the  narrow  prison  of  the  child’s  body.  For  eyes  that  could 
see  into  it  there  would  be  revealed  whole  worlds  half  buried 


12 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


in  the  darkness,  nebulae  taking  shape,  a universe  in  the  making. 
His  being  is  limitless.  He  is  all  that  there  is.  . . . 

Months  pass.  ...  Islands  of  memory  begin  to  rise  above 
the  river  of  his  life.  At  first  they  are  little  uncharted  islands, 
rocks  just  peeping  above  the  surface  of  the  waters.  Eound 
about  them  and  behind  in  the  twilight  of  the  dawn  stretches 
the  great  untroubled  sheet  of  water;  then  new  islands,  touched 
to  gold  by  the  sun.  ^ 

So  from  the  abyss  of  the  soul  there  emerge  shapes  definite, 
and  scenes  of  a strange  clarity.  In  the  boundless  dAy  which 
dawns  once  more,  ever  the  same,  with  its  great  monotonous 
beat,  there  begins  to  show  forth  the  round  of  days,  hand  in 
hand,  and  some  of  their  forms  are  smiling,  others  sad.  But  ever 
the  links  of  the  chain  are  broken,  and  memories  are  linked  to- 
gether above  weeks  and  months.  . . . 

The  Eiver  ...  the  Bells  ...  as  long  as  he  can  remember — 
V far  back  in  the  abysses  of  time,  at  every  hour  of  his  life — 
always  their  voices,  familiar  and  resonant,  have  rung  out.  . . . 

Night^ — ^half  asleep — a pale  light  made  white  the  win- 
dow. . . . The  river  murmurs.  Through  the  silence  its  voiee 
rises  omnipotent;  it  reigns  over  all  creatures.  Sometimes  it 
caresses  their  sleep,  and  seems  almost  itself  to  die  away  in  the 
roaring  of  its  torrent.  Sometimes  it  grows  angry,  and  howls 
like  a furious  beast  about  to  bite.  The  clamor  ceases.  Now 
there  is  a murmuring  of  infinite  tenderness,  silvery  sounds  like 
clear  little  bells,  like  the  laughter  of  children,  or  soft  singing 
voices,  or  dancing  music — a great  mother  voice  that  never,  never 
goes  to  sleep ! It  rocks  the  child,  as  it  has  rocked  through  the 
ages,  from  birth  to  death,  the  generations  that  were  before 
him ; it  fills  all  his  thoughts,  and  lives  in  all  his  dreams,  wraps 
him  round  with  the  cloak  of  its  fluid  harmonies,  whieh  still 
will  be  about  him  when  he  lies  in  the  little  cemetery  that  sleeps 
by  the  water’s  edge,  washed  by  the  Ehine.  . . . 

The  bells.  . . . It  is  dawn!  They  answer  each  other’s  call, 
sad,  melancholy,  friendly,  gentle.  At  the  sound  of  their  slow 
voices  there  rise  in  him  hosts  of  dreams — dreams  of  the  past, 
desires,  hopes,  regrets  for  creatures  who  are  gone,  unknown 
to  the  child,  although  he  had  his  being  in  them,  and  they 
live  again  in  him.  Ages  of  memory  ring  out ' in  that 


THE  DAWN 


13 


music.  So  much  mourning,  so  many  festivals!  from 

the  depths  of  the  room  it  is  as  though,  when  they  are  heard, 
there  passed  lovely  waves  of  sound  through  the  soft  air,  free 
viinging  birds,  and  the  moist  soughing  of  the  wind.  Through 
the  window  smiles  a patch  of  blue  sky ; a sunbeam  slips  through 
the  curtains  to  the  bed.  The  little  world  known  to  the  eyes  of 
the  child,  all  that  he  can  see  from  his  bed  every  morning  as 
he  awakes,  all  that  with  so  much  effort  he  is  beginning  to 
recognize  and  classify,  so  that  he  may  be  master  of  it— his 
kingdom  is  lit  up.  There  is  the  table  where  people  eat,  the 
cupboard  where  he  hides  to  play,  the  tiled  floor  along  which 
he  crawls,  and  the  wall-paper  which  in  its  antic  shapes  holds 
for  him  so  many  humorous  or  terrifying  stories,  and  the  clock 
which  chatters  and  stammers  so  many  words  which  he  alone 
can  understand.  How  many  things  there  are  in  this  room ! He 
does  not  know  them  all.  Every  day  he  sets  out  on  a voyage  of 
exploration  in  this  universe  which  is  his.  Everything  is  his. 
Nothing  is  immaterial;  everything  has  its  worth,  man  or  fly. 
Everything  lives — the  cat,  the  fire,  the  table,  the  grains  of 
dust  which  dance  in  a sunbeam.  The  room  is  a country,  a 
day  is  a lifetime.  How  is  a creature  to  know  himself  in  the 
midst  of  these  vast  spaces  ? The  world  is  so  large  1 A creature 
is  lost  in  it.  And  the  faces,  the  actions,  the  movement,  the 
noise,  which  make  round  about  him  an  unending  turmoil ! . . . 

I He  is  weary ; his  eyes  close ; he  goes  to  sleep.  That  sweet  deep 
sleep  that  overcomes  him  suddenly  at  any  time,  and  wherever 
I he  may  be — on  his  mother’s  lap,  or  under  the  table,  where  he 
i loves  to  hide!  ...  It  is  good.  All  is  good.  . . . 

These  first  days  come  buzzing  up  in  his  mind  like  a field 
of  corn  or  a wood  stirred  by  the  wind,  and  cast  in  shadow  by 
the  great  fleeting  clouds.  . . . 

The  shadows  pass;  the  sun  penetrates  the  forest.  Jean- 
Christophe  begins  to  find  his  way  through  the  labyrinth  of  the 
day. 

It  is  morning.  His  parents  are  asleep.  He  is  in  his  little 
bed,  lying  on  his  back.  He  looks  at  the  rays  of  light  dancing 
on  the  ceiling.  There  is  infinite  amusement  in  it.  Now  he 
laughs  out  loud  with  one  cf  those  jolly  children’s  laughs  which 


14 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


stir  the  hearts  of  those  that  hear  them.  His  mother  leans 
out  of  her  bed  towards  him,  and  says : “ What  is  it,  then,  little 
mad  thing  ? ” Then  he  laughs  again,  and  perhaps  he  makes 
an  effort  to  laugh  because  he  has  an  audience.  His  mamma 
looks  severe,  and  lays  a finger  on  her  lips  to  warn  him  lest 
he  should  wake  his  father : but  her  weary  eyes  smile  in  spite  of 
herself.  They  whisper  together.  Then  there  is  a furious  growl 
from  his  father.  Both  tremble.  His  mother  hastily  turns  her 
back  on  him,  like  a naughty  little  girl : she  pretends  to  be  asleep. 
Jean-Christophe  buries  himself  in  his  bed,  and  holds  his 
breath.  . . . Dead  silence. 

After  some  time  the  little  face  hidden  under  the  clothes  comes 
to  the  surface  again.  On  the  roof  the  weathercock  creaks. 
The  rain-pipe  gurgles;  the  Angelus  sounds.  When  the  wind 
comes  from  the  east,  the  distant  bells  of  the  villages  on  the 
other  bank  of  the  river  give  answer.  The  sparrows  foregathered 
in  the  ivy-clad  wall  make  a deafening  noise,  from  which  three 
or  four  voices,  always  the  same,  ring  out  more  shrilly  than  the 
others,  just  as  in  the  games  of  a band  of  children.  A pigeon 
coos  at  the  top  of  a chimney.  The  child  abandons  himself  to 
the  lullaby  of  these  sounds.  He  hums  to  himself  softly,  then 
a little  more  loudly,  then  quite  loudly,  then  very  loudly,  until 
once  more  his  father  cries  out  in  exasperation:  “That  little 
donkey  never  will  be  quiet!  Wait  a little,  and  I’ll  pull  your 
ears  I ” Then  Jean-Christophe  buries  himself  in  the  bedclothes 
again,  and  does  not  know  whether  to  laugh  or  cry.  He  is  terri- 
fied and  humiliated;  and  at  the  same  time  the  ideal  tof  the 
donkey  with  which  his  father  has  compared  him  maffes  him 
burst  out  laughing.  From  the  depths  of  his  bed  he  imitates 
its  braying.  This  time  he  is  whipped.  He  sheds  every  tear  that 
is  in  him.  What  has  he  done?  He  wanted  so  much  to  laugh 
and  to  get  up ! And  he  is  forbidden  to  budge.  How  do  people 
sleep  forever?  When  will  they  get  up?  . . . 

One  day  he  could  not  contain  himself.  He  heard  a cat  and 
a dog  and  something  queer  in  the  street.  He  slipped  out  of 
bed,  and,  creeping  awkwardly  with  his  bare  feet  on  the  tiles, 
he  tried  to  go  down  the  stairs  to  see  what  it  was  ; but  the  door 
was  shut.  To  open  it,  he  climbed  on  to  a chair;  the  whole  thing 
collapsed,  and  he  hurt  himself  and  howled.  And  once  mo  :e 


THE  DAWN" 


15 


at  the  top  of  the  stairs  he  was  whipped.  He  is  always  being, 
whipped!  . . . 

He  is  in  church  with  his  grandfather.  He  is  bored.  He  is 
not  very  comfortable.  He  is  forbidden  to  stir,  and  all  the 
people  are  saying  all  together  words  that  he  does  not  under- 
stand. They  all  look  solemn  and  gloomy.  It  is  not  their  usual 
way  of  looking.  He  looks  at  them,  half  frightened.  Old  Lena, 
their  neighbor,  who  is  sitting  next  to  him,  looks  very  cross; 
there  are  moments  when  he  does  not  recognize  even  his  grand- 
father. He  is  afraid  a little.  Then  he  grows  used  to  it,  and 
tries  to  find  relief  from  boredom  by  every  means  at  his  disposal. 
He  balances  on  one  leg,  twists  his  neck  to  look  at  the  ceiling, 
makes  faces,  pulls  his  grandfather’s  coat,  investigates  the  straws 
in  his  chair,  tries  to  make  a hole  in  them  with  his  finger,  listens 
to  the  singing  of  birds,  and  yawns  so  that  he  is  like  to  dislocate 
his  jaw. 

Suddenly  there  is  a deluge  of  sound : the  organ  is  played.  A 
thrill  goes  down  his  spine.  He  turns  and  stands  with  his  chin 
resting  on  the  back  of  his  chair,  and  he  looks  very  wise.  He 
does  not  understand  this  noise;  he  does  not  know  the  meaning 
of  it;  it  is  dazzling,  bewildering,  and  he  can  hear  nothing 
clearly.  But  it  is  good.  It  is  as  though  he  were  no  longer 
sitting  there  on  an  uncomfortable  chair  in  a tiresome  old  house. 
He  is  suspended  in  mid-air,  like  a bird;  and  when  the  fiood 
of  sound  rushes  from  one  end  of  the  church  to  the  other,  filling 
the  arches,  reverberating  from  wall  to  wall,  he  is  carried  with 
it,  fiying  and  skimming  hither  and  thither,  with  nothing  to 
do  but  to  abandon  himself  to  it.  He  is  free;  he  is  happy. 
The  sun  shines.  ...  He  falls  asleep. 

His  grandfather  is  displeased  with  him.  He  behaves  ill  at^^ 


He  is  at  home,  sitting  on  the  ground,  with  his  feet  in  his 
hands.  He  has  just  decided  that  the  door-mat  is  a boat,  and 
the  tiled  fioor  a river.  He  all  but  drowned  in  stepping  off 
the  carpet.  He  is  surprised  and  a little  put  out  that  the  others 
pay  no  attention  to  the  matter  as  he  does  when  he  goes  into 
the  room.  He  seizes  his  mother  by  the  skirts.  You  see. 


16 


JEAN-CHKISTOPHE 


it  is  water!  You  must  go  across  by  the  bridge.”  (The  bridge 
is  a series  of  holes  between  the  red  tiles.)  His  mother  crosses 
('  without  even  listening  to  him.  He  is  vexed,  as  a dramatic 
i author  is  vexed  when  he  sees  his  audience  talking  during  his 
' great  work. 

Next  moment  he  thinks  no  more  of  it.  The  tiled  floor  is  no 
longer  the  sea.  He  is  lying  down  on  it,  stretched  full-length, 
with  his  chin  on  the  tiles,  humming  music  of  his  own  com- 
position, and  gravely  sucking  his  thumb  and  dribbling.  He 
is  lost  in  contemplation  of  a crack  between  the  tiles.  The 
lines  of  the  tiles  grimace  like  faces.  The  imperceptible  hole 
grows  larger,  and  becomes  a valley;  there  are  mountains  about 
it.  A centipede  moves : it  is  as  large  as  an  elephant.  Thunder 
might  crash,  the  child  would  not  hear  it. 

No  one  bothers  about  him,  and  he  has  no  need  of  any  one. 
He  can  even  do  without  door-mat  boats,  and  caverns  in  the  tiled 
floor,  with  their  fantastic  fauna.  His  body  is  enough.  What 
a source  of  entertainment!  He  spends  hours  in  looking  at  his 
nails  and  shouting  with  laughter.  They  have  all  different  faces, 
and  are  like  people  that  he  knows.  And  the  rest  of  his 
body ! ...  He  goes  on  with  the  inspection  of  all  that  he  has. 
How  many  surprising  things!  There  are  so  many  marvels. 
j He  is  absorbed  in  looking  at  them. 

'/  But  he  was  very  roughly  picked  up  when  they  caught  him 
at  it 

Sometimes  he  takes  advantage  of  his  mother’s  back  being 
1 turned,  to  escape  from  the  house.  At  first  they  used  to  run 
I after  him  and  bring  him  back.  Then  they  got  used  to  letting 
1 him  go  alone,  only  so  he  did  not  go  too  far  away.  The  house 
i is  at  the  end  of  the  town;  the  country  begins  almost  at  once. 
I As  long  as  he  is  within  sight  of  the  windows  he  goes  without 
I stopping,  very  deliberately,  and  now  and  then  hopping  on  one 
^ I foot.  But  as  soon  as  he  has  passed  the  corner  of  the  road, 
/ and  the  brushwood  hides  him  from  view,  he  changes  abruptly. 

■ He  stops  there,  with  his  finger  in  his  mouth,  to  find  out  what 
, story  he  shall  tell  himself  that  day ; for  he  is  full  of  stories, 
j True,  they  are  all  very  much  like  each  other,  and  every  one 
of  them  could  be  told  in  a few  lines.  He  chooses.  Generally 


k 


THE  DAWN 


17 


( 

;he  takes  up  the  same  story,  sometimes  from  the  point  where 
it  left  off,  sometimes  from  the  beginning,  with  variations.  But 
any  trifle — a word  heard  by  chance — is  enough  to  set  his  mind 
off  on  another  direction. 

Chance  was  fruitful  of  resources.  It  is  impossible  to  imagine 
what  can  be  made  of  a simple  piece  of  wood,  a broken  bough 
found  alongside  a hedge.  (You  break  them  off  when  you  do 
not  find  them.)  It  was  a magic  wand.  If  it  were  long  and 
thin,  it  became  a lance,  or  perhaps  a sword;  to  brandish  it 
aloft  was  enough  to  cause  armies  to  spring  from  the  earth. 
Jean-Christophe  was  their  general,  marching  in  front  of  them, 
setting  them  an  example,  and  leading  them  to  the  assault  of 
a hillock.  If  the  branch  were  flexible,  it  changed  into  a whip. 
Jean-Christophe  mounted  on  horseback  and  leaped  precipices. 
Sometimes  his  mount  would  slip,  and  the  horseman  would  find 
himself  at  the  bottom  of  the  ditch,  sorrily  looking  at  his  dirty 
hands  and  barked  knees.  If  the  wand  were  lithe,  then  Jean- 
Christophe  would  make  himself  the  conductor  of  an  orchestra: 
he  would  be  both  conductor  and  orchestra;  he  conducted  and 
he  sang;  and  then  he  would  salute  the  bushes,  with  their  little 
green  heads  stirring  in  the  wind. 

He  was  also  a magician.  He  walked  with  great  strides 
through  the  fields,  looking  at  the  sky  and  waving  his  arms. 
He  commanded  the  clouds.  He  wished  them  to  go  to  the  right, 
but  they  went  to  the  left.  Then  he  would  abuse  them,  and 
repeat  his  command.  He  would  watch  them  out  of  the  corner 
of  his  eye,  and  his  heart  would  beat  as  he  looked  to  see  if  there 
were  not  at  least  a little  one  which  would  obey  him.  But 
they  went  on  calmly  moving  to  the  left.  Then  he  would  stamp 
his  foot,  and  threaten  them  with  his  stick,  and  angrily  order 
them  to  go  to  the  left;  and  this  time,  in  truth,  they  obeyed 
him.  He  was  happy  and  proud  of  his  power.  He  would  touch 
the  flowers  and  bid  them  change  into  golden  carriages,  as  he 
had  been  told  they  did  in  the  stories;  and,  although  it  never 
happened,  he  was  quite  convinced  that  it  would  happen  if  only 
he  had  patience.  He  would  look  for  a grasshopper  to  turn  into 
I a hare;  he  would  gently  lay  his  stick  on  its  back,  and  speak 
a rune.  The  insect  would  escape:  he  would  bar  its  way.  A 
few  moments  later  he  would  be  lying  on  his  belly  near  to  it, 

0 


18 


JEAN-CHKISTOPHE 


looking  at  it.  Then  he  would  have  forgotten  that  he  was  a 
magician,  and  just  amuse  himself  with  turning  the  poor  beasi 
on  its  back,  while  he  laughed  aloud  at  its  contortions. 

It  occurred  to  him  also  to  tie  a piece  of  string  to  his  magic 
wand,  and  gravely  cast  it  into  the  river,  and  wait  for  a fish 
to  come  and  bite.  He  knew  perfectly  well  that  fish  do  not 
usually  bite  at  a piece  of  string  without  bait  or  hook;  but  he 
thought  that  for  once  in  a way,  and  for  him,  they  might  maive 
an  exception  to  their  rule;  and  in  his  inexhaustible  confident 
he  carried  it  so  far  as  to  fish  in  the  street  with  a whip  through 
the  grating  of  a sewer.  He  would  draw  up  the  whip  from  time 
to  time  excitedly,  pretending  that  the  cord  of  it  was  more  heavy, 
and  that  he  had  caught  a treasure,  as  in  a story  that  his  grand- 
father had  told  him.  ... 

And  always  in  the  middle  of  all  these  games  there  used  to 
occur  to  him  moments  of  strange  dreaming  and  complete  for- 
getfulness. Everything  about  him  would  then  be  blotted  out; 
he  would  not  know  what  he  was  doing,  and  was  not  even  con- 
scious of  himself.  These  attacks  would  take  him  unawares. 
Sometimes  as  he  walked  or  went  upstairs  a void  would  suddenly 
open  before  him.  He  would  seem  then  to  have  lost  all  thought. 
But  when  he  came  back  to  himself,  he  was  shocked  and  be- 
wildered to  find  himself  in  the  same  place  on  the  dark  staircase. 
It  was  as  though  he  had  lived  through  a whole  lifetime — in 
the  space  of  a few  steps. 

His  grandfather  used  often  to  take  him  with  him  on  his 
evening  walk.  The  little  boy  used  to  trot  by  his  side  and  give 
him  his  hand.  They  used  to  go  by  the  roads,  across  plowed 
fields,  which  smelled  strong  and  good.  The  grasshoppers 
chirped.  Enormous  crows  poised  along  the  road  used  to  watch 
them  approach  from  afar,  and  then  fly  away  heavily  as  they 
came  up  with  them. 

His  grandfather  would  cough.  Jean-Christophe  knew  quite 
well  what  that  meant.  The  old  man  was  burning  with  the 
desire  to  tell  a story;  but  he  wanted  it  to  appear  that  the  child 
had  asked  him  for  one.  Jean-Christophe  did  not  fail  him; 
they  understood  each  other.  The  old  man  had  a tremendous 
affection  for  his  grandson,  and  it  was  a great  joy  to  find  in 
him  a willing  audience.  He  loved  to  tell  of  episodes  in  his 


THE  DAWH 


19 


own  life,  or  stories  of  great  men,  ancient  and  modem.  His 
voice  would  then  become  emphatic  and  filled  with  emotion, 
and  would  tremble  with  a childish  joy,  which  he  used  to  try 
to  stifle.  He  seemed  delighted  to  hear  his  own  voice.  Un- 
happily, words  used  to  fail  him  when  he  opened  his  mouth  to 
speak.  He  was  used  to  such  disappointment,  for  it  always  came 
upon  him  with  his  outbursts  of  eloquence.  And  as  he  used  to 
forget  it  with  each  new  attempt,  he  never  succeeded  in  resign- 
ing himself  to  it.  ° 

He  used  to  talk  of  Eegulus,  and  Arminius,  of  the  soldiers 
of  Lutzow,  of  Kmrner,  and  of  Frederic  Stabs,  who  tried  to 
kill  the  Emperor  Napoleon.  His  face  would  glow  as  he  told 
of  incredible  deeds  of  heroism.  He  used  to  pronounce  historic 
words  in  such  a solemn  voice  that  it  was  impossible  to  hear 

them,  and  he  used  to  try  artfully  to  keep  his  hearer  on  tenter- 
hooks at  the  thrilling  moments.  He  would  stop,  pretend  to 
choke,  and  noisily  blow  his  nose ; and  his  heart  would  leap 
when  the  child  asked,  in  a voice  choking  with  impatience : “ And 

then,  grandfather?” 

There  came  a day,  when  Jean-Christophe  was  a little  older, 
when  he  perceived  his  grandfather’s  method;  and  then  he  wick- 
edly set  himself  to  assume  an  air  of  indifference  to  the  rest 
of  the  story,  and  that  hurt  the  poor  old  man.  But  for  the 
moment  Jean-Christophe  is  altogether  held  by  the  power  of  the 
story-teller.  His  blood  leaped  at  the  dramatic  passages.  He 
did  not  know  what  it  was  all  about,  neither  where  nor  when 
these  deeds  were  done,  or  whether  his  grandfather  knew  Ar- 
minius, or  whether  Eegulus  were  not— God  knows  why!— some 
one  whom  he  had  seen  at  church  last  Sunday.  But  his  heart 
and  the  old  man’s  heart  swelled  with  joy  and  pride  in  the 
tale  of  heroic  deeds,  as  though  they  themselves  had  done  them  • 
for  the  old  man  and  the  child  were  both  children. 

Jean-Christophe  was  less  happy  when  his  grandfather  inter- 
po  ated  in  the  pathetic  passages  one  of  those  abstruse  discourses 
so  dear  to  him.  There  were  moral  thoughts  generally  traceable 
to  some  idea,  honest  enough,  but  a little  trite,  such  as  “ Gentle- 
ness is  better  than  violence,”  or  “ Honor  is  the  dearest  thin<^ 
in  life,”  or  “ It  is  better  to  be  good  than  to  be  wicked  ” — only 
they  were  much  more  involved.  Jean-Christophe’s  grandfather 


20 


J EAJN  -UJlKitSTUriliii 


had  no  fear  of  the  criticism  of  his  youthful  audience,  and 
abandoned  himself  to  his  habitual  emphatic  manner ; he  was  not 
afraid  of  repeating  the  same  phrases,  or  of  not  finishing  them, 
or  even,  if  he  lost  himself  in  his  discourse,  of  saying  anything 
that  came  into  his  head,  to  stop  up  the  gaps  in  his  thoughts; 
and  he  used  to  punctuate  his  words,  in  order  to  give  them 
greater  force,  with  inappropriate  gestures.  The  boy  iised  to 
\ listen  with  profound  respect,  and  he  thought  his  grandfather 
' very  eloquent,  but  a little  tiresome.  ^ pit 

Both  of  them  loved  to  return  again  and  again  to  the  fabulous 
legend  of  the  Corsican  conqueror  who  had  taken  Europe.  Jean- 
Christophe’s  grandfather  had  known  him.  He  had  almost 
fought  against  him.  But  he  was  a man  to  admit  the  greatness 
of  his  adversaries:  he  had  said  so  twenty  times.  He  would 
have  given  one  of  his  arms  for  such  a man  to  have  been  born 
on  this  side  of  the  Rhine.  Fate  had  decreed  otherwise;  he 
admired  him,  and  had  fought  against  him— that  is,  he  had 
been  on  the  point  of  fighting  against  him.  But  when  Napoleon 
had  been  no  farther  than  ten  leagues  away,  and  they  had 
marched  out  to  meet  him,  a sudden  panic  had  dispersed^  me 
little  band  in  a forest,  and  every  man  had  fied,  crying.  We 
are  betrayed!”  In  vain,  as  the  old  man  used  to  tell,  m vain 
did  he  endeavor  to  rally  the  fugitives;  he  threw  lumself  in 
front  of  them,  threatening  them  and  weeping:  he  had  been 
swept  away  in  the  fiood  of  them,  and  on  the  morrow  had  found 
himself  at  an  extraordinary  distance  from  the  field  of  battle— 
For  so  he  called  the  place  of  the  rout.  But  Jean-Christophe 
used  impatiently  to  bring  him  back  to  the  exploits  of  the  hero, 
and  he  was  delighted  by  his  marvelous  progress  through  the 
world.  He  saw  him  followed  by  innumerable  men,  givmg 
vent  to  great  cries  of  love,  and  at  a wave  of  his  hand  hurling 
themselves  in  swarms  upon  fiying  enemies— they  were  always 
in  flight.  It  was  a fairy-tale.  The  old  man  added  a little  to 
it  to  "fill  out  the  story;  he  conquered  Spain,  and  almost  con- 
quered England,  which  he  could  not  abide. 

Old  KrafEt  used  to  intersperse  his  enthusiastic  narratives  with 
indignant  apostrophes  addressed  to  his  hero.  The  patriot  awoke 
in  him,  more  perhaps  when  he  told  of  the  Emperor’s  defeats 
than  of  the  Battle  of  Jena.  He  would  stop  to  shake  his  fist 


THE  DAWN 


21 


at  the  river,  and  spit  contemptuously,  and  mouth  noble  insults 
— ^he  did  not  stoop  to  less  than  that.  He  would  call  him 

rascal,^^  wild  beast,^^  immdral.’^  And  if  such  words  were 
intended  to  restore  to  the  boy’s  mind  a sense  of  justice,  it  must 
be  confessed  that  they  failed  in  their  object;  for  childish  logic 
leaped  to  this  conclusion:  ^^If  a great  man  like  that  had  no 
morality,  morality  is  not  a great  thing,  and  what  matters  most 
is  to  be  a great  man.”  But  the  old  man  was  far  from  suspecting 
the  thoughts  which  were  running  along  by  his  side. 

They  would  both  be  silent,  pondering,  each  after  his  own 
fashion,  these  admirable  stories — except  when  the  old  man  used 
to  meet  one  of  his  noble  patrons  taking  a walk.  Then  he  would 
stop,  and  bow  very  low,  and  breathe  lavishly  the  formulae 
of  obsequious  politeness.  The  child  used  to  blush  for  it  with- 
out knowing  why.  But  his  grandfather  at  heart  had  a vast 
respect  for  established  power  and  persons  who  had  arrived  ” ; 
and  possibly  his  great  love  for  the  heroes  of  whom  he  told 
was  only  because  he  saw  in  them  persons  who  had  arrived  at 
a point  higher  than  the  others. 

When  it  was  very  hot,  old  Krafft  used  to  sit  under  a tree, 
and  was  not  long  in  dozing  off.  Then  Jean-Christophe  used 
to  sit  near  him  on  a heap  of  loose  stones  or  a milestone,  or 
some  high  seat,  uncomfortable  and  peculiar;  and  he  used  to 
wag  his  little  legs,  and  hum  to  himself,  and  dream.  Or  some- 
times he  used  to  lie  on  his  back  and  watch  the  clouds  go  by; 
they  looked  like  oxen,  and  giants,  and  hats,  and  old  ladies, 
and  immense  landscapes.  He  used  to  talk  to  them  in  a low 
voice,  or  be  absorbed  in  a little  cloud  which  a great  one  was 
on  the  point  of  devouring.  He  was  afraid  of  those  which 
were  very  black,  almost  blue,  and  of  those  which  went  very 
fast.  It  seemed  to  him  that  they  played  an  enormous  part  in  ; 
life,  and  he  was  surprised  that  neither  his  grandfather  nor  - 
his  mother  paid  any  attention  to  them.  They  were  terrible 
beings  if  they  wished  to  do  harm.  Fortunately,  they  used  to 
go  by,  kindly  enough,  a little  grotesque,  and  they  did  not  stop. 
The  boy  used  in  the  end  to  turn  giddy  with  watching  them 
too  long,  and  he  used  to  fidget  with  his  legs  and  arms,  as 
though  he  were  on  the  point  of  falling  from  the  sky.  His 
eyelids  then  would  wink,  and  sleep  would  overcome  him.  Si- 


22 


JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 


lence.  . . • The  leaves  murmur  gently  and  tremble  in  the  sun; 
a faint  mist  passes  through  the  air;  the  uncertain  flies  hover, 
booming  like  an  organ;  the  grasshoppers,  drunk  with  the  sum- 
mer, chirp  eagerly  and  hurriedly;  all  is  silent  . . . Under  the 
vault  of  the  trees  the  cry  of  the  green  woodpecker  has  magic 
sounds.  Far  away  on  the  plain  a peasant’s  voice  harangues 
his  oxen;  the  shoes  of  a horse  ring  out  on  the  white  road.  Jean- 
Christophe’s  eyes  close.  Near  him  an  ant  passes  along  a dead 
branch  across  a furrow.  He  loses  consciousness.  . . . Ages  have 
passed.  He  wakes.  The  ant  has  not  yet  crossed  the  twig. 

Sometimes  the  old  man  would  sleep  too  long,  and  his  face 
would  grow  rigid,  and  his  long  nose  would  grow  longer,  and 
his  mouth  stand  open.  Jean-Christophe  used  then  to  look  at 
bim  uneasily,  and  in  fear  of  seeing  his  head  change  gradually 
into  some  fantastic  shape.  He  used  to  sing  loudly,  so  as  to 
wake  him  up,  or  tumble  down  noisily  from  his  heap  of  stones. 
One  day  it  occurred  to  him  to  throw  a handful  of  pine-needles 
in  his  grandfather’s  face,  and  tell  him  that  they  had  fallen 
from  the  tree.  The  old  man  believed  him,  and  that  made 
Jean-Christophe  laugh.  But,  unfortunately,  he  tried  the  trick 
again,  and  just  when  he  had  raised  his  hand  he  saw  his  grand- 
father’s eyes  watching  him.  It  was  a terrible  affair.  The  old 
man  was  solemn,  and  allowed  no  liberty  to  be  taken  with  the 
respect  due  to  himself.  They  were  estranged  for  more  than 
a week. 

The  worse  the  road  was,  the  more  beautiful  it  was  to  Jean- 
Christophe.  Every  stone  had  a meaning  for  him ; he  knew  them 
all.  The  shape  of  a rut  seemed  to  him  to  be  a geographical 
accident  almost  of  the  same  kind  as  the  great  mass  of  the 
Taunus.  In  his  head  he  had  the  map  of  all  the  ditches  and 
hillocks  of  the  region  extending  two  kilometers  round  about 
the  house,  and  when  he  made  any  change  in  the  flxed  ordering 
of  the  furrows,  he  thought  himself  no  less  important  than  an 
engineer  with  a gang  of  navvies;  and  when  with  his  heel  he 
crushed  the  dried  top  of  a clod  of  earth,  and  filled  up  the 
valley  at  the  foot  of  it,  it  seemed  to  him  that  his  day  had 
not  been  wasted. 

Sometimes  they  would  meet  a peasant  in  his  cart  on  the 
highroad,  and  if  the  peasant  knew  J ean-Christophe’s  grand- 


THE  DAWK 


23 

:athei*  they  would  climb  up  by  his  side.  That  was  a Paradise 
m earth.  The  horse  went  fast^  and  Jean-Christophe  laughed 
r^ith  delight,  except  when  they  passed  other  people  walking; 
;hen  he  would  look  serious  and  indifferent,  like  a person  accus-^ 
:omed  to  drive  in  a carriage,  but  his  heart  was  filled  with  pride. 
Eis  grandfather  and  the  man  would  talk  without  bothering 
ibout  him.  Hidden  and  crushed  by  their  legs,  hardly  sitting,, 
lometimes  not  sitting  at  all,  he  was  perfectly  happy.  He  talked 
iloud,  without  troubling  about  any  answer  to  what  he  said.. 
Ee  watched  the  horse’s  ears  moving.  What  strange  creatures, 
ihose  ears  were ! They  moved  in  every  direction — to  right  and 
eft;  they  hitched  forward,  and  fell  to  one  side,  and  turned 
)ackwards  in  such  a ridiculous  way  that  he  burst  out  laughing., 
Se  would  pinch  his  grandfather  to  make  him  look  at  them; 
)ut  liis  grandfather  was  not  interested  in  them.  He  would 
‘epulse  Jean-Christophe,  and  tell  him  to  be  quiet.  Jean-Chris* 
ophe  would  ponder.  He  thought  that  when  people  grow  up 
hey  are  not  surprised  by  anything,  and  that  when  they  are 
itrong  they  know  everything;  and  he  would  try  to  be  grown 
ip  himself,  and  to  hide  his  curiosity,  and  appear  to  be  in- 
lifferent. 

1 He  was  silent  then.  The  rolling  of  the  carriage  made  him' 
ilrowsy.  The  horse’s  little  bells  danced — ding,  ding ; dong,  ding., 
Iviusic  awoke  in  the  air,  and  hovered  about  the  silvery  bells,, 
like  a swarm  of  bees.  It  beat  gaily  with  the  rhythm  of  the 
jart — an  endless  source  of  song,  and  one  song  came  on  another’s 
leels.  To  Jean-Christophe  they  were  superb.  There  was  one 
especially  which  he  thought  so  beautiful  that  he  tried  to  draw 
lis  grandfather’s  attention  to  it.  He  sang  it  aloud.  They 
;ook  no  heed  of  him.  He  began  it  again  in  a higher  key, 
hen  again  shrilly,  and  then  old  Jean  Michel  said  irritably: 
^Be  quiet;  you  are  deafening  me  with  your  trumpet-call!” 
That  took  away  his  breath.  He  blushed  and  was  silent  and 
nortified.  He  crushed  with  his  contempt  the  two  stockish 
mbeciles  who  did  not  understand  the  sublimity  of  his  song, 
vhich  opened  wide  the  heavens!  He  thought  them  very  ugly, 
rith  their  week-old  beards,  and  they  smelled  very  ill. 

He  found  consolation  in  watching  the  horse’s  shadow.  That 
ras  an  astonishing  sight.  The  beast  ran  along  with  thenr 


24 


JEAN'-CHEISTOPHE 


lying  on  its  side.  In  the  evening,  when  they  returned,  ii 
covered  a part  of  the  field.  They  came  upon  a rick,  and  the 
shadow^s  head  would  rise  up  and  then  return  to  its  place  wher 
they  had  passed.  Its  snout  was  fiattened  out  like  a burst 
balloon;  its  ears  were  large,  and  pointed  like  candles.  Was 
it  really  a shadow  or  a creature?  Jean-Christophe  would  not 
have  liked  to  encounter  it  alone.  He  would  not  have  run  aftei 
it  as  he  did  after  his  grandfather^s  shadow,  so  as  to  walk 
on  its  head  and  trample  it  under  foot.  The  shadows  of  the 
trees  when  the  sun  was  low  were  also  objects  of  meditation. 
They  made  barriers  along  the  road,  and  looked  like  phantoms, 
melancholy  and  grotesque,  saying,  Go  no  farther ! and  the 
creaking  axles  and  the  horse’s  shoes  repeated,  No  farther ! ” 
Jean-Christophe’s  grandfather  and  the  driver  never  ceaseq 
their  endless  chatter.  Sometimes  they  would  raise  their  voices! 
especially  when  they  talked  of  local  affairs  or  things  going  wrong! 
The  child  would  cease  to  dream,  and  look  at  them  uneasily.  II 
seemed  to  him  that  they  were  angry  with  each  other,  and  M 
was  afraid  that  they  would  come  to  blows.  However,  on  th^ 
contrary,  they  best  understood  each  other  in  their  common  dis- 
likes. For  the  most  part,  they  were  without  hatred  or  the  least 
passion;  they  talked  of  small  matters  loudly,  just  for  the  pleas- 
ure of  talking,  as  is  the  joy  of  the  people.  But  Jean*Christophej 
not  understanding  their  conversation,  only  heard  the  loud  tone? 
of  their  voices  and  saw  their  agitated  faces,  and  thought  fear^! 
fully:  ^^How  wicked  he  looks!’  Surely  they  hate  each  other! 
How  he  rolls  his  eyes,  and  how  wide  he  opens  his  mouth ! 
spat  on  my  nose  in  his  fury.  0 Lord,  he  will  kill  my  grand- 
father! . . i 


The  carriage  stopped.  The  peasant  said:  Here  you  are.’l 
The  two  deadly  enemies  shook  hands.  Jean-Christophe’s  grand- 
father got  down  first;  the  peasant  handed  him  the  little  boy. 
The  whip  flicked  the  horse,  the  carriage  rolled  away,  and  ther^ 
they  were  by  the  little  sunken  road  near  the  Ehine.  The  su| 
dipped  down  below  the  fields.  The  path  wound  almost  to  ty 
water’s  edge.  The  plentiful  soft  grass  yielded  under  their  feet, 
crackling.  Alder-trees  leaned  over  the  river,  almost  half  i| 
the  water.  A cloud  of  gnats  danced.  A boat  passed  poiselessly, 
drawn  on  by  the  peaceful  current,  striding  along.  The  watei 


THE  DAWN* 


25 


Licked  the  branches  of  the  willows  with  a little  noise  like 
ps.  The  light  was  soft  and  misty,  the  air  fresh,  the  river 
dvery  gray.  Tlypy  reached  their  home,  and  the  crickets  chirped,, 
nd  on  the  threshold  smiled  his  mother^s  dear  face.  . . . 

Oh,  delightful  memories,  kindly  visions,  which  will  hum  their 
lelody  in  their  tuneful  flight  through  life!  . . . Journeys  in 
iter  life,  great  towns  and  moving  seas,  dream  countries  and 
wed  faces,  are  not  so  exactly  graven  in  the  soul  as  these  childish 
ulks,  or  ohe  corner  of  the  garden  seen  every  day  through  the 
indow,  through  the  steam  and  mist  made  by  the  child^s  mouth 
lued  to  it  for  want  of  other  occupation.  . . . 

Evening  now,  and  the  house  is  shut  up.  Home  . . . the  ^ 
Bfuge  from  all  terrifying  things — darkness,  night,  fear,  things 
nknown.  No  enemy  can  pass  the  threshold.  . . . The  fire 
ares.  A golden  duck  turns  slowly  on  the  spit;  a delicious 
nell  of  fat  and  of  crisping  flesh  scents  the  room.  The  joy 
f eating,  incomparable  delight,  a religious  enthusiasm,  thrills 
f joy!  The  body  is  too  languid  with  the  soft  warmth,  andj 
le  fatigues  6f  the  day,  and  the  familiar  voices.  The  act  of 
i'gestion  plunges  it  in  ecstasy,  and  faces,  shadows,  the  lamp- 
lade,  the  tongues  of  flame  dancing  with  a shower  of  stars 

I the  fireplace — all  take  on  a magical  appearance  of  delight. 
ean-Christophe  lays  his  cheek  on  his  plate,  the  better  to  enjoy 

II  this  happiness.  . . . 

He  is  in  his  soft  bed.  How  did  he  come  there  ? H^  is 
v^ercome  with  weariness.  The  buzzing  of  the  voices  in  the 
3om  and  the  visions  of  the  day  are  intermingled  in  his  mind, 
[is  father  takes  his  violin;  the  shrill  sweet  sounds  cry  out 
Dmplaining  in  the  night.  But  the  crowning  joy  is  when  his 
lother  comes  and  takes  Jean-Christophe’s  hands.  He  is  drowsy, 
nd,  leaning  over  him,  in  a low  voice  she  sings,  as  he  ai^s,  ap 
Id  song  with  words  that  have  no  meaning.  His  father  thinks 
(^ch  music  stupid,  but  Jean-Christophe  never  wearies  of  it. 

[e  holds  his  breath,  and  is  between  laughing  and  crying.  His 
eart  is  intoxicated.  He  does  not  know  where  he  is,  and  he  is 
owing  with  tenderness.  He  throws  his  little  arms  round 
lother^s  neck,  and  hugs  her  with  all  his  strength.  She 
aughing : 

u want  to  strangle  me?’’ 


26 


JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 


He  hugs  her  close.  How  he  loves  her ! How  he  loves  eve 
thing!  Everybody,  everything!  All  is  good,  all  is  beam 
ful.  . . . He  sleeps.  The  cricket  on  the  hee^th  cheeps.  Hi 
grandfather’s  tales,  the  great  heroes,  float  by  in  the  happ 
night.  ...  To  be  a hero  like  them!  ...  Yes,  he  will  be  tha 
...  he  is  that.  . . . Ah,  how  good  it  is  to  live! 


What  an  abundance  of  strength,  joy,  pride,  is  in  that  littl 
creature ! What  superfluous  energy ! His  body  and  mind  nev6 
cease  to  move;  they  are  carried  round  and  round  brcathlessh 
Like  a little  salamander,  he  dances  day  and  night  in  the  flame 
His  is  an  unwearying  enthusiasm  finding  its  food  in  all  thing 
A delicious  dream,  a bubbling  well,  a treasure  of  inexhaustib’ 
hope,  a laugh,  a song,  unending  drunkenness.  Life  does  n< 
hold  him  yet;  always  he  escapes  it.  He  swims  in  the  infiuit 
How  happy  he  is ! He  is  made  to  be  happy ! There  is  nothiE 
A in  him  that  does  not  believe  in  happiness,  and  does  not  elm 
k-to  it  with  all  his  little  strength  and  passion!  .... 

Life  will  soon  see  to  it  that  he  is  brought  to  reason. 


II 


Ij 


Jj  alba  vinceva  I’ora  mattutina 
Che  fuggia  'nnanzi,  si  che  di  lontano 
Conobbi  il  tremolar  della  marina.  . . . ^ 

Purgatorio,  i. 


The  Kraffts  came  originally  from  Antwerp.  Old  Jean  Micb 
had  left  the  country  as  a result  of  a boyish  freak,  a viole: 
quar'^el,  such  as  he  had  often  had,  for  he  was  devilish  pu 
^ua:  :^s,  and  it  had  had  an  unfortunate  ending.  He  set.L 
do>^n,  almost  fifty  year's  ago,  in  the  little  town  of  the  pri 
cipality,  with  its  red-pointed  roofs  and  shady  gardens,  ly.^ 
on  the  slope  of  a gentle  hill,  mirrored  in  the  pale  green  e/j 
of  Vater  Rhein.  An  excellent  musician,  he  had  readily  ga^n 
appreciation  in  a country  of  musicians.  He  had  take:| 
there  by  marrying,  forty  years  ago,  Clara  Sartorius  daj 
of  the  Prince’s  Kapellmeister,  whose  duties  he  took  over. 


wai'  a placid  German  with  two  passions — cooking  and  I 


THE  DAWN* 


Vie  had  for  her  husband  a veneration  only  equaled  by  that 
hich  she  had  for  her  father.  Jean  Michel  no  less  admired 
is  wife.  They  had  lived  together  in  perfect  amity  for  fifteen 
ears,  and  they  had  four  children.  Then  Clara  died,  and  Jean 
lichel  bemoaned  her  loss,  and  then,  five  months  later,  married 
)ttilia  Schiitz,  a girl  of  twenty,  with  red  cheeks,  robust  and 
miling.  After  eight  years  of  marriage  she  also  died,  but  in 
bat  time  she  gave  him  seven  children — eleven  children  in  all, 
f whom  only  one  had  survived.  Although  he  loved  them  much, 
11  these  bereavements  had  not  shaken  his  good-humor.  The 
reatest  blow  had  been  the  death  of  Ottilia,  three  years  ago, 
^hich  had  come  to  him  at  an  age  when  it  is  difficult  to  start 
ife  again  and  to  make  a new  home.  But  after  a moment’s- 
infusion  old  Jean  Michel  regained  his  equilibrium,  which 

0 misfortune  seemed  able  to  disturb. 

He  was  an  affectionate  man,  but  health  was  the  strongest 
ling  in  him.  He  had  a physical  repugnance  from  sadness,  and 
need  of  gaiety,  great  gaiety,  Flemish  fashion — an  enormous 
nd  childish  laugh.  Whatever  might  be  his  grief,  he  did  not 
rink  one  drop  the  less,  nor  miss  one  bite  at  table,  and  hi 
and  never  had  one  day  off.  Under  his  direction  the  Cour 
rchestra  won  a small  celebrity  in  the  Ehine  country,  wh 
ean  Michel  had  become  legendary  by  reason  of  his  athletic 
:ature  and  his  outbursts  of  anger.  He  could  not  master  them, 

1 spite  of  all  his  efforts,  for  the  violent  man  was  at  bottom 
mid  and  afraid  of  compromising  himself.  He  loved  decorum 
ad  feared  opinion.  But  his  blood  ran  away  with  him.  He 
sed  to  see  red,  and  he  used  to  be  the  victim  of  sudden  fits  of 
razy  impatience,  not  only  at  rehearsals,  but  at  the  concerts, 
here  once  in  the  Prince’s  presence  he  had  hurled  his  baton  and 
ad  stamped  about  like  a man  possessed,  as  he  apostrophized 
le  of  the  musicians  in  a furious  and  stuttering  voice.  The 
rince  was  amused,  but  the  artists  in  question  were  rancorous 
j^ainst  him.  In  vain  did  Jean  Michel,  ashamed  of  his  out- 
irst,  try  to  pass  it  by  immediately  in  exaggerated  obsequious- 
3SS.  On  the  next  occasion  he  would  break  out  again,  and  as 
is  extreme  irritability  increased  with  age,  in  the  end  it  made 
s position  very  difficult.  He  felt  it  himself,  and  one  day, 
lienihis  outbursts  had  all  but  caused  the  whole  orchestra  to 


JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 

strike  he  sent  in  his  resignation.  He  hoped  that  in  considera- 
Sn  of  his  services  the,  Wd  make  difficulties  about  occeptmg 
it  and  would  ask  him  to  stay.  There  was  iiothing  of  the  kind, 
and  as  he  was  too  proud  to  go  back  on  his  offer,  >'»  >'«" 

hearted,  and  crying  out  upon  the  H. 

Since  that  time  he  had  not  known  how  to  fill  his  days,  li 
was  more  than  seventy,  hut  he  was  still  vigorous  and  he  wenl 
r wTSng  and  going  up  and  down  the  town  from  morning 
to  night  giving  lessons,  and  entering  into  discussioi^,  pro 
nouncing  perorftions,  and  entering  into  everything.  He  wa 
ingenious,  and  found  all  sorts  of  ways  of  keeping  himself  oecu 
pifd  He  began  to  repair  musical  instruments;  he  invent^ 
experimented,  and  sometimes  discovered 

composed  also,  and  set  store  by  his  compositions  He  ha, 
once  written  a Missa  Solennis,  of  which  he  used  often  to  taj 
Td  it  was  the  glory  of  his  family.  It  had  cost  him  so  mud 
trouble  that  he  had  all  hut  brought  about  a congesUon  o 
mind  in  the  writing  of  it.  He  tried  to  persuade  himself  th, 
it  was  a work  of  genius,  but  he  knew  perfectly  well  with  wh 
,mptiness  of  thought  it  had  been  written,  and  he  dared  n 
ook  again  at  the  manuscript,  because  every  time  he  d ^ 
he  recognimf  in  the  phrases  that  he  had  fought  0 e , 
uwn“.°B  taken  from  other  authors,  painfully  pieced  toget^ 
haphazaid.  It  was  a great  sorrow  to  him.  lie  had  ideas  son^ 
Ses  which  he  thought  admirable.  He  would  wun  trembling 
to  his  table.  Could  he  keep  his  inspiration  this  time  . i 
hardlv  had  he  taken  pen  in  hand  than  he  found  himself  a o 
?n  saemfand  all  iJefforts  to  call  to  life  again  the  vanish 
voices  ended  only  in  bringing  to  his  oars  familiar  melodies 

“itfh“"ar:,>-®rrSeorge  Sand,  “ unhappy  geniuses  w 
lack  the  power  of  expression,  and  carry  down  to  their  gra 
the  nnknLn  region  of  their  thoughts,  as  has  said  a meml 
S tiat  great  family  of  illustrious  mutes  or  stammerer 
Geoffrey  Saint-Hilaire.”  Old  Jean  Michel  belonged  to  tl 
family.  He  was  no  more  successful  in  expressing  hims 
r^usic  than  in  words,  and  he  always  deceived  himself, 
would  so  much  have  loved  to  talk,  to  write,  to  be  a gr 

musician,  an  eloquent  orator!  It  was  his  secret  sore.  He  t 


THE  DAWH 


29 


lO  one  of  it,  did  nqt  admit  it  to  himself,  tried  not  to  think  of 
t;  but  he  did  think  of  it,  in  spite  of  himself,  and  so  there 
■as  the  seed  of  death  in  his  soul. 

Poor  old  man ! In  nothing  did  he  succeed  in  being  absolutely 
imself.  There  were  in  him  so  many  seeds  of  beauty  and 
ower,  but  they  never  put  forth  fruit;  a profound  and  touching 
aith  in  the  dignity  of  Art  and  the  moral  value  of  life,  but 
; was  nearly  always  translated  in  an  emphatic  and  ridiculous 
ishion;  so  much  noble  pride,  and  in  life  an  almost  servile 
dmiration  of  his  superiors;  so  lofty  a desire  for  independence, 
ud,  in  fact,  absolute  docility;  pretensions  to  strength  of  mind, 
ud  every  conceivable  superstition;  a passion  for  heroism,  real 
mrage,  and  so  much  timidity! — a nature  to  stop  by  the  way- 
de. 

Jean  Michel  had  transferred  all  his  ambitions  to  his  son, 
ad  at  first  Melchior  had  promised  to  realize  them.  From 
lildhood  he  had  shown  great  musical  gifts.  He  learned  with 
ftraordinary  facility,  and  quickly  acquired  as  a violinist  a 
irtuosity  which  for  a long  time  made  him  the  favorite,  almost 
le  idol,  of  the  Court  concerts.  He  played  the  piano  and  other 
istruments  pleasantly.  He  was  a fine  talker,  well,  though  a 
ttle  heavily,  built,  and  was  of  the  type  which  passes  in  Ger- 
lany  for  classic  beauty  ; he  had  a large  brow  that  expressed 
sthing,  large  regular  features,  and  a curled  beard — a Jupiter 
^ the  banks  of  the  Rhine.  Old  Jean  Michel  enjoyed  his  son’s 
iccess;  he  was  ecstatic  over  the  virtuoso’s  tours  do  force,  he 
ho  had  never  been  able  properly  to  play  any  instrument.  In 
uth,  Melchior  would  have  had  no  difficulty  in  expressing  what 
) thought.  The  trouble  was  that  he  did  not  think;  and  he 
d not  even  bother  about  it.  He  had  the  soul  of  a mediocre 
'median  who  takes  pains  with  the  infiexions  of  his  voice 
ithout  caring  about  what  they  express,  and,  with  anxious 
watches  their  effect  on  his  audience. 

The  odd  thing  was  that,  in  spite  of  his  constant  anxiety 
»out  his  stage  pose,  there  was  in  him,  as  in  Jean  Michel,  in 
ite  of  his  timid  respect  for  social  conventions,  a curious, 
regular,  unexpected  and  chaotic  quality,  which  made  people 
y that  the  Kraffts  were  a bit  crazy.  It  did  not  harm  him 


30  JEAN-CHEISTOPHLif 

at  first;  it  seemed  as  though  these  very  ec  itricEies  were  the 
proof  of  the  genius  attributed  to  him;  for  it  is  understood 
among  people  of  common  sense  that  an  artist  has  none.  But 
it  was  not  long  before  his  extravagances  were  traced  to  their 
source — usually  the  bottle.  Nietzsche  says  that  Bacchus  is  the 
God  of  Music,  and  Melchior’s  instinct  was  of  the  same  opinion ; 
but  in  his  case  his  god  was  very  ungrateful  to  him;  far  from 
giving  him  the  ideas  he  lacked,  he  took  away  from  him  the  few 
that  he  had.  After  his  absurd  marriage — absurd  in  the  eyes 
of  the  world,  and  therefore  also  in  his  own— he  gave  himself 
Tip  to  it  more  and  more.  He  neglected  his  playing  so  secure 
in  his  own  superiority  that  very  soon  he  lost  it.  Other  virtuosi 
■came  to  succeed  him  in  public  favor.  That  was  bitter  to 
him,  but  instead  of  rousing  his  energy,  these  rebuffs  only  dis- 
couraged him.  He  avenged  himself  by  crying  down  his  rivals, 
with  his  pot-fellows.  In  his  absurd  conceit  he  counted  on 
succeeding  his  father  as  musical  director:  another  man  was 
appointed.  He  thought  himself  persecuted,  and  took  on  the 
airs  of  a misunderstood  genius.  Thanks  to  the  esteem  in  which 
old  Krafft  was  held,  he  kept  his  place  as  a violin  in  the  orchestra, 
but  gradually  he  lost  all  his  lessons  in  the  town.  And  if  this 
blow  struck  most  at  his  vanity,  it  touched  his  purse  even  more.i 
For  several  years  the  resources  of  his  household  had  grown  less 
and  less,  following  on  various  reverses  of  fortune.  After  having 
known  plenty,  want  came,  and  every  day  increased.  Melchio^ 
refused  to  take  notice  of  it;  he  did  not  spend  one  penny  tht 
less  on  his  toilet  or  his  pleasures. 

He  was  not  a bad  man,  but  a half-good  man,  which  is  perhaps 
worse — weak,  without  spring,  without  moral  strength,  but  foi 
the  rest,  in  his  own  opinion,  a good  father,  a good  son,  a good| 
husband,  a good  man — and  perhaps  he  was  good,  if  to  be  sol 
it  is  enough  to  possess  an  easy  kindness,  which  is  quickljl 
1 touched,  and  that  animal  affection  by  which  a man  loves  hif 
kin  as  a part  of  himself.  It  cannot  even  be  said  that  he  was 
very  egoistic ; he  had  not  personality  enough  for  that.  He  was 
nothing.  They  are  a terrible  thing  in  life,  these  people  whs 
1'  are  nothing.  Like  a dead  weight  thrown  into  the  air,  thq 
\ fall,  and  must  fall;  and  in  their  fall  they  drag  with  thea 
1 everything  that  they  have. 


THE  DAWN 


31 


It  was  when  the  situation  of  his  family  had  reached  its  most 
difficult  podnt,  that  little  Jean-Christophe  began  to  understand 
what  was  going  on  about  him. 

He  was  no  longer  the  only  child.  Melchior  gave  his  wife 
a child  every  year,  without  troubling  to  think  what  was  to 
become  of  it  later.  Two  had  died  young;  two  others  were  three 
and  four  years  old.  Melchior  never  bothered  about  them. 
Louisa,  when  she  had  to  go  out,  left  them  with  J ean-Christophe, 
now  six  years  old. 

The  charge  cost  Jean-Christophe  something,  for  he  had  to 
sacrifice  to  his  duty  his  splendid  afternoons  in  the  fields.  But 
he  was  proud  of  being  treated  as  a man,  and  gravely  fulfilled 
his  task.  He  amused  the  children  as  best  he  could  by  showing 
them  his  games,  and  he  set  himself  to  talk  to  them  as  he  had 
heard  his  mother  talking  to  the  baby.  Or  he  would  carry  them 
in  his  arms,  one  after  another,  as  he  had  seen  her  do;  he  bent 
under  their  weight,  and  clenched  his  teeth,  and  with  all  his 
strength  clutched  his  little  brother  to  his  breast,  so  as  to  prevent 
his  falling.  The  children  always  wanted  to  be  carried — they 
were  never  tired  of  it;  and  when  Jean-Christophe  could  do  no 
more,  they  wept  without  ceasing.  They  made  him  very  un- 
happy,  and  he  was  often  troubled  about  them.  They  were  very 
dirty,  and  needed  maternal  attentions.  Jean-Christophe  did 
not  know  what  to  do.  They  took  advantage  of  him.  Some- 
times he  wanted  to  slap  them,  but  he  thought,  They  are  little ; 
they  do  not  know,^^  and,  magnanimously,  he  let  them  pinch  him, 
and  beat  him,  and  tease  him.  Ernest  used  to  howl  for  nothing ; 
he  used  to  stamp  his  feet  and  roll  about  in  a passion;  he  was 
a nervous  child,  and  Louisa  had  bidden  Jean-Christophe  not 
to  oppose  his  whims.  As  for  Eodolphe,  he  was  as  malicious 
as  a monkey;  he  always  took  advantage  of  Jean-Christophe 
having  Ernest  in  his  arms,  to  play  all  sorts  of  silly  pranks 
behind  his  back;  he  used  to  break  toys,  spill  water,  dirty  his 
frock,  and  knock  the  plates  over  as  he  rummaged  in  the  cup- 
board. 

And  when  Louisa  returned,  instead  of  praising  Jean-Chris- 
tophe, she  used  to  say  to  him,  without  scolding  him,  but  with 
an  injured  air,  as  she  saw  the  havoc : My  poor  child,  you  are 
not  very  clever ! 


32 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


/ 


? Jean-Christophe  would  be  mortified,  and  his  heart  would 
grow  big  within  him. 

Louisa,  who  let  no  opportunity  escape  of  earning  a little 
I money,  used  to  go  out  as  cook  for  exceptional  occasions,  such 
I as  marriages  or  baptismal  feasts.  Melchior  pretended  to  know 
I nothing  about-  it — it  touched  his  vanity — ^but  he  was  not  an- 
noyed with  her  for  doing  it,  so  long  as  he  did  not  know.  Jean- 
Christophe  had  as  yet  no  idea  of  the  difficulties  of  life;  he 
knew  no  other  limit  to  his  will  than  the  will  of  his  parents, 

‘ and  that  did  not  stand  much  in  his  way,  for  they  let  him 
do  pretty  much  as  he  pleased.  His  one  idea  was  to  grow 
up,  so  as  to  be  able  to  do  as  he  liked.  He  had  no  conception 
; of  obstacles  standing  in  the  way  at  every  turn,  and  he  had 
never  the  least  idea  but  that  his  parents  were  completely  their  ' 
i own  masters.  It  was  a shock  to  his  whole  being  when,  for  ■ 
; the  first  time,  he  perceived  that  among  men  there  are  those 
who  command,  and  those  who  are  commanded,  and  that  his  own  t 
, people  were  not  of  the  first  class;  it  was  the  first  crisis  of  ; 
his  life. 

It  happened  one  afternoon.  His  mother  had  dressed  him  in 
his  cleanest  clothes,  old  clothes  given  to  her  which  Louisa’s 
ingenuity  and  patience  had  turned  to  account.  He  went  to  ! 
find  her,  as  they  had  agreed,  at  the  house  in  which  she  was  i 
. working.  He  was  abashed  at  the  idea  of  entering  alone.  A | 
footman  was  swaggering  in  the  porch;  he  stopped  the  boy,  ; 
and  asked  him  patronizingly  what  he  wanted.  Jean-Christophe  > 
blushed,  and  murmured  that  he  had  come  to  see  Frau  Krafft  ” 

^ — as  he  had  been  told  to  say. 

I Frau  Krafft  ? What  do  you  want  with  Frau  Krafft  ? ” 

I asked  the  footman,  ironically  emphasizing  the  word  Frau. 

I Your  mother?  Go  down  there.  You  will  find  Louisa  in  the 
\ kitchen  at  the  end  of  the  passage.” 

He  went,  growing  redder  and  redder.  He  was  ashamed  to 
hear  his  mother  called  familiarly  Louisa.  He  was  humiliated; 
he  would  have  liked  to  run  away  down  to  his  dear  river,  and 
the  shelter  of  the  brushwood  where  he  used-  to  tell  himself  'i 
stories.  I 

In  the  kitchen  he  came  upon  a number  of  other  servants,  I 


THE  DAWN 


33 


who  greeted  him  with  noisy  exclamations.  At  the  back,  near 
the  stove,  his  mother  smiled  at  him  with  tender  embarrassment. 
He  ran  to  her,  and  clung  to  her  skirts.  She  was  wearing  a 
white  apron,  and  holding  a wooden  spoon.  She  made  him  more 
unhappy  by  trying  to  raise  his  chin  so  as  to  look  in  his  face, 
and  to  make  him  hold  out  his  hand  to  everybody  there  and  say 
good-day  to  them.  He  would  not;  he  turned  to  the  wall  and 
hid  his  face  in  his  arms.  Then  gradually  he  gained  courage, 
and  peeped  out  of  his  hiding-place  with  merry  bright  eyes, 
which  hid  again  every  time  any  one  looked  at  him.  He  stole 
looks  at  the  people  there.  His  mother  looked  busy  and  im- 
portant, and  he  did  not  know  her  like  that ; she  went  from  one 
saucepan  to  another,  tasting,  giving  advice,  in  a sure  voice 
explaining  recipes,  and  the  cook  of  the  house  listened  respect- 
fully. The  boy’s  heart  swelled  with  pride  as  he  saw  how  much 
his  mother  was  appreciated,  and  the  great  part  that  she  played 
in  this  splendid  room,  adorned  with  magnificent  objects  of 
gold  and  silver. 

Suddenly  conversation  ceased.  The  door  opened.  A lad- 
entered  with  a rustling  of  the  stuffs  she  was  wearing.  Sh 
cast  a suspicious  look  about  her.  She  was  no  longer  young, 
and  yet  she  was  wearing  a light  dress  with  wide  sleeves.  She 
caught  up  her  dress  in  her  hand,  so  as  not  to  brush  against 
anything.  It  did  not  prevent  her  going  to  the  stove  and  look- 
ing at  the  dishes,  and  even  tasting  them.  When  she  raised  her 
hand  a little,  her  sleeve  fell  back,  and  her  arm  was  bare  to  the 
elbow.  , Jean-Christophe  thought  this  ugly  and  improper.  How 
and  abruptly  she  spoke  to  Louisa ! And  how  humbly 
Louisa  replied ! J ean-Christophe  hated  it.  He  hid  away  in 
his  corner,  so  as  not  to  be  observed,  but  it  was  no  use.  The 
lady  asked  who  the  little  boy  might  be.  Louisa  fetched  him 
him ; she  held  his  hands  to  prevent  his  hiding 
his  face.  And,  though  he  wanted  to  break  away  and  flee, 
Jean-Christophe  felt  instinctively  that  this  time  he  must  not 
resist.  The  lady  looked  at  the  boy’s  scared  face,  and  at  first 
she  gave  him  a kindly,  motherly  smile.  But  then  she  resumed 
her  patronizing  air,  and  asked  him  about  his  behavior,  and  his 
piety,  and  put  questions  to  him,  to  which  he  did  not  reply. 
She  looked  to  see  how  his  clothes  fitted  him,  and  Louisa  eagerly 


34 


JEAN-CHKISTOPHE 


declared  that  they  were  magnificent.  She  pulled  down  his 
waistcoat  to  remove  the  creases.  Jean-Christophe  ® 

cry,  it  fitted  so  tightly.  He  did  not  understand  why  his  mother 

'^^Thflady^  toS' him  by  the  hand  and  said  that  she  would 
take  him  to  her  own  children.  Jean-Christophe  cast  a look 
of  despair  at  his  mother;  but  she  smiled  at  the  mistress  so 
eagerly  that  he  saw  that  there  was  nothing  to  hope  for  from 
her,  and  he  followed  his  guide  like  a sheep  that  is  led  to  the 

^^^The?  came  to  a garden,  where  two  cross-looking  children,  a 
boy  and  a girl,  about  the  same  age  as  Jean-Christophe,  were 
apparently  sulky  with  each  other.  Jean-Christophe  s advent 
created  a diversion.  They  came  up  to  examine  the  new  arrival. 
Jean-Christophe,  left  with  the  children  by  the  lady,  stood  s ock- 
still  in  a pathway,  not  daring  to  raise  his  eyes.  The  wo  o ers 
stood  motionless  a short  distance  away,  and  looked  him  up  and 
down,  nudged  each  other,  and  tittered.  Finally,  they  made  up 
their  minds.  They  asked  him  who  he  was,  whence  he  came, 
nd  what  his  father  did.  Jean-Christophe,  turned  to  stone, 
ade  no  reply;  he  was  terrified  almost  to  the  point  of  tears, 
specially  of  the  little  girl,  who  had  fair  hair  in  plaits,  a short 

drt,  and  bare  legs.  , • • 

They  began  to  play.  Just  as  Jean-Christophe  was  beginning 

To  be  a little  happier,  the  little  boy  stopped  dead  in  front  of 

ihim,  and  touching  his  coat,  said: 

“Hullo!  That’s  mine!”  _ 

Jean-Christophe  did  not  understand.  Furious  at  this  asser- 
^ tion  that  his  coat  belonged  to  some  one  else,  he  shook  his  head 

violently  in  denial.  , 

“I  know  it  all  right,”  said^fte  boy.  “It’s  my  old  blue 

waistcoat.  There’s  a spot  on  it,  _ 

And  he  put  his  finger  on  the  spot.  Then,  going  on  with  h 
inspection,  he  examined  Jean-Christophe’s  feet,  and  asked  what 
his  mended-up  shoes  were  made  of.  Jean-Christophe  grew  crim- 
son. The  little  girl  pouted  and  whispered  to  her  brother 
Jean-Christophe  heard  it— that  it  was  a little  poor  boy.  Jean- 
Christophe  resented  the  word.  He  thought  he  would  succeed 
in  combating  the  insulting  opinions,  as  he  stammered  m a 


THE  DAWN 


35 


choking  voice  that  he  was  the  son  of  Melchior  KrafPt,  and  that 
his  mother  was  Louisa  the  cook.  It  seemed  to  him  that  this 

title  was  as  good  as  any  other,  and  he  was  right.  But  the 

two  children,  interested  in  the  news,  did  not  seem  to  esteem 
him  any  the  more  for  it.  On  the  contrary,  they  took  on  a 
patronizing  tone.  They  asked  him  what  he  was  going  to  be — 
a cook  or  a coachman.  Jean-Christophe  revolted.  He  felt  an 
iciness  steal  into  his  heart. 

Encouraged  by  his  silence,  the  two  rich  children,  who  had 

conceived  for  the  little  poor  boy  one  of  those  cruel  and  un- 

reasoning antipathies  which  children  have,  tried  various  amus-  / 
ing  ways  of  tormenting  him.  The  little  girl  especially 
implacable.  She  observed  that  Jean-Christophe  could  hardly 
run,  because  his  clothes  were  so  tight,  and  she  conceived  the 
subtle  idea  of  making  him  jump.  They  made  an  obstacle  of 
little  seats,  and  insisted  on  Jean-Christophe  clearing  it.  The 
wretched  child  dared  not  say  what  it  was  that  prevented  his  , 
jumping.  He  gathered  himself  together,  hurled  himself  through  1 
the  air,  and  measured  his  length  on  the  ground.  They  roared 
with  laughter  at  him.  He  had  to  try  again.  Tears  in  his 
eyes,  he  made  a desperate  attempt,  and  this  time  succeeded  in  j 
jumping.  That  did  not  satisfy  his  tormentors,  who  decided 
that  the  obstacle  was  not  high  enough,  and  they  built  it  up 
until  it  became  a regular  break-neck  affair.  Jean-Christophe 
tried  to  rebel,  and  declared  that  he  would  not  jump.  Then  the 
little  girl  called  him  a coward,  and  said  that  he  was  afraid. 
Jean-Christophe  could  not  stand  that,  and,  knowing  that  he 
must  fall,  he  jumped,  and  fell.  His  feet  caught  in  the  obstacle;  , ' 
I the  whole  thing  toppled  over  with  him.  He  grazed  his  hands  V* 

[ and  almost  broke  his  head,  and,  as  a crowning  misfortune,  his 
I trousers  tore  at  the  knees  and  elsewhere.  He  was  sick  with 
I shame;  he  heard  the  two  children  dancing  with  delight  round 
him;  he  suffered  horribly.  He  felt  that  they  despised  and 
i hated  him.  Why  ? Why  ? He  would  gladly  have  died ! There 
, is  no  more  cruel  suffering  than  that  of  a child  who  discovers..-  i 
I for  the  first  time  the  wickedness  of  others;  he  believes  then  that 
! he  is  persecuted  by  the  whole  world,  and  there  is  nothing  to 
support  him ; there  is  nothing  then — nothing ! . . . Jean-Chris- 
tophe tried  to  get  up;  the  little  boy  pushed  him  down  again; 


36 


JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 


the  little  girl  kicked  him.  He  tried  again,  and  they  both 
jumped  on  him,  and  sat  on  his  back  and  pressed  his  face  down 
into  the  ground.  Then  rage  seized  him— it  was  too  much.  His 
hands  were  bruised,  his  fine  coat  was  torn  a catastrophe  for 
him !— shame,  pain,  revolt  against  the  injustice  of  it,  so  many 
misfortunes  all  at  once,  plunged  him  in  blind  fury.  He  rose 
to  his  hands  and  knees,  shook  himself  like  a dog,  and  rolled 
his  tormentors  over;  and  when  they  returned  to  the  assault 
he  hutted  at  them,  head  down,  bowled  over  the  little  girl,  and, 
with  one  blow  of  his  fist,  knocked  the  boy  into  the  middle  of  a 

flower-bed.  • • 

They  howled.  The  children  ran  into  the  house  with  piercing 
cries.  Doors  slammed,  and  cries  of  anger  were  heard.  The 
lady  ran  out  as  quickly  as  her  long  dress  would  let  her.  Jean- 
Christophe  saw  her  coming,  and  made  no  attempt  to  escape 
He  was  terrified  at  what  he  had  done;  it  was  a thing  unheard 
of,  a crime;  but  he  regretted  nothing.  He  waited.  He  was 
lost.  So  much  the  better ! He  was  reduced  to  despair. 

The  lady  pounced  on  him.  He  felt  her  beat  him.  He  heard 
her  talking  in  a furious  voice,  a flood  of  words;  but  he  could 
distinguish  nothing.  His  little  enemies  had  come  back  to  see 
his  shame,  and  screamed  shrilly.  There  were  servants— a babel 
of  voices.  To  complete  his  downfall,  Louisa,  who  had  been  sum- 
moned, appeared,  and,  instead  of  defending  him,  she  began  to 
scold  him— she,  too,  without  knowing  anything— and  bade  hirn 
beg  pardon.  He  refused  angrily.  She  shook  him,  and  dragged 
him  by  the  hand  to  the  lady  and  the  children,  and  bade  him 
go  on  his  knees.  But  he  stamped  and  roared,  and  bit  his 
mother’s  hand.  Finally,  he  escaped  among  the  servants,  who 

laughed.  . , . » , - • 

He  went  away,  his  heart  beating  furiously,  his  face  burning 
with  anger  and  the  slaps  which  he  had  received.  He  tried  not 
to  think,  and  he  hurried  along  because  he  did  not  ^^nt  to 
cry  in  the  street.  He  wanted  to  be  at  home,  so  as  to  be  able 
to  find  the  comfort  of  tears.  He  choked ; the  blood  beat  in  his 

head;  he  was  at  bursting-point. 

Finally,  he  arrived;  he  ran  up  the  old  black  staircase  to 
his  usual  nook  in  the  bay  of  a window  above  the  river;  he 
hurled  himself  into  it  breathlessly,  and  then  there  came  a flood 


1, 


THE  DAWH 


37 


of  tears.  He  did  not  know  exactly  why  he  was  crying,  but  \ 
he  had  to  cry;  and  when  the  first  flood  of  them  was  done,  he  ’ 
wept  again  because  he  wanted,  with  a sort  of  rage,  to  make  i 
himself  suffer,  as  if  he  could  in  this  way  punish  the  others  I 
as  well  as  himself.  Then  he  thought  that  his  father  must  be 
coming  home,  and  that  his  mother  would  tell  him  everything, 
and  that  hjs  own  miseries  were  by  no  means  at  an  end.  He 
resolved  on  flight,  no  matter  whither,  never  to  return. 

Just  as  he  was  going  downstairs,  he  bumped  into  his  father, 
who  was  coming  up. 

“What  are  you  doing,  boy?  Where  are  you  going?”  asked 
Melchior. 

He  did  not  reply. 

“You  are  up  to  some  folly.  Wliat  have  jmu  done?” 

Jean-Christophe  held  his  peace. 

“What  have  you  done?”  repeated  Melchior.  “Will  you 
answer  ? ” 

The  boy  began  to  cry  and  Melchior  to  shout,  vying  with 
each  other  until  they  heard  Louisa  hurriedly  coming  up  the 
stairs.  She  arrived,  still  upset.  She  began  with  violent  re- 
proach and  further  chastisement,  in  which  Melchior  joined  as 
soon  as  he  understood— and  probably  before— with  blows  that 
would  have  felled  an  ox.  Both  shouted;  the  boy  roared.  They  \ 
ended  by  angry  argument.  All  the  time  that  he  was  beating  \ 
his  son,  Melchior  maintained  that  he  was  right,  and  that  this  \ 
was  the  sort  of  thing  that  one  came  by,  by  going  out  to  service  i 
with  people  who  thought  they  could  do  everything  because  they 
had  money;  and  as  she  beat  the  child,  Louisa  shouted  that  her  \ 

1 husband  was  a brute,  that  she  would  never  let  him  touch  the 
boy,  and  that  he  had  really  hurt  him.  Jean-Christophe  was, 
in  fact,  bleeding  a little  from  the  nose,  but  he  hardly  gave  a | 

thought  to  it,  and  he  was  not  in  the  least  thankful  to  his  \ 

mother  for  stopping  it  with  a wet  cloth,  since  she  went  on  scold- 
ing him.  In  the  end  they  pushed  him  away  in  a dark  closet, 
and  shut  him  up  without  any  supper. 

He  heard  them  shouting  at  each  other,  and  he  did  not  know  t/'' 
which  of  them  he  detested  most.  He  thought  it  must  be  hisl^'^ 
mother,  for  he  had  never  expected  any  such  wickedness  from'  1 
her.  All  the  misfortunes  of  the  day  overwhelmed  him : all  that 


38  JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 


he  had  suffeted — the  injustice  of  the  children,  the  injustice  of 
the  lady,  the  injustice  of  his  parents,  and — this  he  felt  like 
an  open  wound,  without  quite  knowing  why — the  degradation 
of  his  parents,  of  whom  he  was  so  proud,  before  these  evil  and 
contemptible  people.  Such  cowardice,  of  which  for  the  first 
time  he  had  become  vaguely  conscious,  seemed  ignoble  to  him. 
Everything  was  upset  for  him — his  admiration  for  his  own 
people,  the  religious  respect  with  which  they  inspired  him,  his 
confidence  in  life,  the  simple  need  that  he  had  of  loving  others 
and  of  being  loved,  his  moral  faith,  blind  but  absolute.  It 
was  a complete  cataclysm.  He  was  crushed  by  brute  force, 
without  any  means  of  defending  himself  or  of  ever  again  escap- 
ing. He  choked.  He  thought  himself  on  the  point  of  death. 

All  his  body  stift'ened  in  desperate  revolt.  He  beat  with  fists,  , 

feet,  head,  against  the  wall,  howled,  was  seized  with  convul-  1 

sions,  and  fell  to  the  floor,  hurting  himself  against  the  furniture.  ; 

His  parents,  running  up,  took  him  in  their  arms.  They 
vied  with  each  other  now  as  to  who  should  be  the  more  tender  i 
with  him.  His  mother  undressed  him,  carried  him  to  his  bed,  , 
and  sat  by  him  and  remained  with  him  until  he  was  calmer. 

But  he  did  not  yield  one  inch.  He  forgave  her  nothing,  and 
pretended  to  be  asleep  to  get  rid  of  her.  His  mother  seemed  ; 

to  him  bad  and  cowardly.  He  had  no  suspicion  of  all  the  ' 

suffering  that  she  had  to  go  through  in  order  to  live  and  g;ive  | 

a living  to  her  family,  and  of  what  she  had  borne  in  taking  l 

sides  against  him.  j 

After  he  had  exhausted  to  the  last  drop  the  incredible  store  ] 
of  tears  that  is  in  the  eyes  of  a child,  he  felt  somewhat  com- 
; forted.  He  was  tired  and  worn  out,  but  his  nerves  were  too 
much  on  stretch  for  him  to  sleep.  The  visions  that  had  been 
with  him  floated  before  him  again  in  his  semi-torpor.  Espe- 
cially he  saw  again  the  little  girl  with  her  bright  eyes  and  her 
turned-up,  disdainful  little  nose,  her  hair  hanging  down  to  her 
shoulders,  her  bare  legs  and  her  childish,  affected  way  of  talk- 
ing. He  trembled,  as  it  seemed  to  him  that  he  could  hear  her 
voice.  He  remembered  how  stupid  he  had  been  with  her,  and 
he  conceived  a savage  hatred  for  her.  He  did  not  pardon  her 
for  having  brought  him  low,  and  was  consumed  with  the  desire 
to  humiliate  her  and  to  make  her  weep.  He  sought  means  of 


THE  HAWH 


39 


doing  this,  but  found  none.  There  was  no  sign  of  her  ever 
caring  about  him.  But  by  way  of  consoling  himself  he  sup- 
posed that  everything  was  as  he  wished  it  to  be.  He  supposed 
that  he  had  become  very  powerful  and  famous,  and  decided 
that  she  was  in  love  with  him.  Then  he  began  to  tell  himself 
one  of  those  absurd  stories  which  in  the  end  he  would  regard 
as  more  real  than  reality. 

She  was  dying  of  love,  but  he  spurned  her.  When  he  passed 
before  her  house  she  watched  him  pass,  hiding  behind  the 
curtains,  and  he  knew  that  she  'watched  him,  but  he  pretended 
to  take  no  notice,  and  talked  gaily.  Even  he  left  the  country, 
and  journeyed  far  to  add  to  her  anguish.  He  did  great  things. 
Here  he  introduced  into  his  narrative  fragments  chosen  from 
his  grandfather’s  heroic  tales,  and  all  this  time  she  was  falling 
ill  of  grief.  Her  mother,  that  proud  dame,  came  to  beg  of 
him : “^My  poor  child  is  dying.  I beg  you  to  come ! ” He  went. 
She  was  in  her  bed.  Her  face  was  pale  and  sunken.  She 
held  out  her  arms  to  him.  She  could  not  speak,  but  she  took 
his  hands  and  kissed  them  as  she  wept.  Then  he  looked  at 
her  with  marvelous  kindness  and  tenderness.  He  bade  her 
recover,  and  consented  to  let  her  love  him.  At  this  point  of 
the  story,  when  he  amused  himself  by  drawing  out  the  coming 
together  by  repeating  their  gestures  and  words  several  times, 
sleep  overcame  him,  and  he  slept  and  was  consoled. 

But  when  he  opened  his  eyes  it  was  day,  and  it  no  longer 
shone  so  lightly  or  so  carelessly  as  its  predecessor.  There  was 
a great  change  in  the  world.  Jean-Christophe  now  knew  the 
meaning  of  injustice. 

There  were  now  times  of  extremely  straitened  circumstances 
at  home.  They  became  more  and  more  frequent.  They  lived 
meagerly  then.  No  one  was  more  sensible  of  it  than  Jean-, 
Chrfstophe.  His  father  saw  nothing.  He  was  served  first, 
and  there  was  always  enough  for  him.  He  talked  noisily,  and 
roared  with  laughter  at  his  own  jokes,  and  he  never  noticed 
his  wife’s  glances  as  she  gave  a forced  laugh,  while  she  watched 
him  helping  himself.  When  he  passed  the  dish  it  was  more 
than  half  empty.  Louisa  helped  the  children— two  potatoes 
each.  When  it  came  to  Jean-Christophe’s  turn  there  were 


40 


JEAN'-CHEISTOPHE 


sometimes  only  three  left,  and  his  mother  was  not  helped.  He 
knew  that  beforehand;  he  had  counted  them  before  they  came 
to  him.  Then  he  summoned  up  courage,  and  said  carelessly : 

“ Only  one,  mother.” 

She  was  a little  put  out. 

‘‘  Two,  like  the  others.” 

“ !No,  please;  only  one.” 

“ Aren’t  you  hungry  ? ” 

“ Ho,  I’m  not  very  hungry.” 

But  she,  too,  only  took  one,  and  they  peeled  them  care- 
fully, cut  them  up  in  little  pieces,  and  tried  to  eat  them  as 
slowly  as  possible.  His  mother  watched  him.  When  he  had 
finished : 

“ Come,  take  it ! ” , 

“ Ho,  mother.”  ; 

But  you  are  ill  ? ” • 

“I  am  not  ill,  but  I have  eaten  enough.” 

Then  his  father  would  reproach  him  with  being  obstinate,  I 
and  take  the  last  potato  for  himself.  But  Jean-Christophe  5 
learned  that  trick,  and  he  used  to  keep  it  on  his  plate  for  ! 
Ernest,  his  little  brother,  who  was  always  hungry,  and  watched  ; 
him  out  of  the  corner  of  his  eyes  from  the  beginning  of  dinner,  : 
and  ended  by  asking:  , 

“ Aren’t  you  going  to  eat  it  ? Give  it  me,  then,  Jean-Chris-  ] 
tophe.”  i 

Oh,  how  Jean-Christophe  detested  his  father,  how  he  hated  ; 
him  for  not  thinking  of  them,  or  for  not  even  dreaming  that  i 
he  was  eating  their  share ! He  was  so,  hungry  that  he  hated 
him,  and  would  gladly  have  told  him  so;  but  he  thought  in  | 
his  pride  that  he  had  no  right,  since  he  could  not  earn  his  \ 
own  living.  His  father  had  earned  the  bread  that  he  took.  | 
He  himself  was  good  for  nothing;  he  was  a burden  on  every-  | 
body ; he  had  no  right  to  talk.  Later  on  he  would  talk — 
if  there  were  any  later  on.  Oh,  he  would  die  of  hunger 
first ! . . . 

He  suffered  more  than  another  child  would  have  done  from 
these  cruel  fasts.  His  robust  stomach  was  in  agony.  Some- 
times he  trembled  because  of  it;  his  head  ached.  There  was 
■a  hole  in  his  chest — a hole  which  turned  and  widened,  as  if  a 


THE  DAWH 


41 


gimlet  were  being  twisted  in  it.  But  he  did  not  complain.  He 
felt  his  mother's  eyes  upon  him,  and  assumed  an  expression  of 
indifference.  Louisa,  with  a clutching  at  her  heart,  understood^ 
vaguely  that  her  little  boy  was  denying  himself  so  that  the 
others  might  have  more.  She  rejected  the  idea,  but  always 
returned  to  it.  She  dared  not  investigate  it  or  ask  Jean-Chris- 
tophe  if  it  were  true,  for,  if  it  were  true,  what  could  she 
do  ? She  had  been  used  to  privation  since  her  childhood. 
What  is  the  use  of  complaining  when  there  is  nothing  to  be 
done?  She  never  suspected,  indeed — she,  with  her  frail  health 
and  small  needs — that  the  boy  might  suffer  more  than  herself. 
She  did  not  say  anything,  but  once  or  twice,  when  the  others 
were  gone,  the  children  to  the  street,  Melchior  about  his  busi- 
ness, she  asked  her  eldest  son  to  stay  to  do  her  some  small 
service.  Jean-Christophe  would  hold  her  skein  while  she  un- 
wound it.  Suddenly  she  would  throw  everything  away,  and 
draw  him  passionately  to  her.  She  would  take  him  on  her 
knees,  although  he  was  quite  heavy,  and  would  hug  and  hug 
him.  He  would  fling  his  arms  round  her  neck,  and  the  two 
of  them  would  weep  desperately,  embracing  each  other. 

^^My  poor  little  boy!  . . 

Mother,  mother  1 . . ."  | 

They  said  no  more,  but  they  understood  each  other.  ' 

It  was  some  time  before  Jean-Christophe  realized  that  his 
father  drank,  Melchior's  intemperance  did  not — at  least,  in 
the  beginning — exceed  tolerable  limits.  It  was  not  brutish.  It 
showed  itself  rather  by  wild  outbursts  of  happiness.  He  used 
to  make  foolish  remarks,  and  sing  loudly  for  hours  together  as 
he  drummed  on  the  table,  and  sometimes  he  insisted  on  dancing 
with  Louisa  and  the  children.  Jean-Christophe  saw  that  his 
mother  looked  sad.  She  would  shrink  back  and  bend  her  face 
over  her  work ; she  avoided  the  drunkard's  eyes,  and  used  to  try 
gently  to  quiet  him  when  he  said  coarse  things  that  made  her 
bluslu  But  Jean-Christophe  did  not  understand,  and  he  was 
in  such  need  of  gaiety  that*  these  noisy  home-comings  of  his 
father  were  almost  a festival  to  him.  The  house  was  melan- 
choly, and  these  follies  were  a relaxation  for  him.  He  used 
to  laugh  heartily  at  Melchior's  crazy  antics  and  stupid  jokes; 


42 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


he  sang  and  danced  with  him;  and  he  was  put  out  when  his 
mother  in  an  angry  voice  ordered  him  to  cease.  How  could 
it  be  wrong,  since  his  father  did  it?  Although  his  ever  keen 
observation,  which  never  forgot  anything  it  had  seen,  told  him 
that  there  were  in  his  fathers  behavior  several  things  which 
did  not  accord  with  his  childish  and  imperious  sense  of  justice, 
yet  he  continued  to  admire  him.  A child  has  so  much  need 
of  an  object  of  admiration!  Doubtless  it  is  one  of  the  eternal 
forms  of  self-love.  When  a man  is,  or  knows  himself  to  be, 
too  weak  to  accomplish  his  desires  and  satisfy  his  pride,  as  a 
child  he  transfers  them  to  his  parents,  or,  as  a man  who  has 
failed,  he  transfers  them  to  his  children.  They  are,  or  shall 
be,  all  that  he  dreamed  of  being — his  champions,  his  avengers — 
and  in  this  proud  abdication  in  their  favor,  love  and  egoism  are 
mingled  so  forcefully  and  yet  so  gently  as  to  bring  him  keen 
delight.  J ean-Christophe  forgot  all  his  grudges  against  his  ; 
father,  and  cast  about  to  find  reasons  for  admiring  him. 
He  admired  his  figure,  his  strong  arms,  his  voice,  his  laugh, 
his  gaiety,  and  he  shone  with  pride  when  he  heard  praise  of  I 
his  father’s  talents  as  a virtuoso,  or  when  Melchior  himself 
recited  with  some  amplification  the  eulogies  he  had  received. 
He  believed  in  his  father’s  boasts,  and  looked  upon  him  as  a 
genius,  as  one  of  his  grandfather’s  heroes. 

One  evening  about  seven  o’clock  he  was  alone  in  the  house. 
His  little  brothers  had  gone  out  with  Jean  Michel.  Louisa  was 
washing  the  linen  in  the  river.  The  door  opened,  and  Melchior 
plunged  in.  He  was  hatless  and  disheveled.  He  cut  a sort 
of  caper  to  cross  the  threshold,  and  then  plumped  down  in  a ‘ 
chair  by  the  table.  Jean-Christophe  began  to  laugh,  thinking 
it  was  a part  of  one  of  the  usual  buffooneries,  and  he  approached 
him.  But  as  soon  as  he  looked  more  closely  at  him  the  desire 
to  laugh  left  him.  Melchior  sat  there  with  his  arms  hanging, 
and  looking  straight  in  front  of  him,  seeing  nothing,  with  his 
eyes  blinking.  His  face  was  crimson,  his  mouth  was  open, 
and  from  it  there  gurgled  every  now  and  then  a silly  laugh. 
Jean-Christophe  stood  stock-still.  He  thought  at  first  that 
his  father  was  joking,  but  when  he  saw  that  he  did  not  budge 
he  was  panic-stricken. 

Papa,  papa ! ” he  cried. 


THE  DAWN 


43 


Melchior  went  on  gobbling  like  a fowl.  J ean-Christophe 
took  him  by  the  arm  in  despair,  and  shook  him  with  all  his 
strength. 

Papa,  dear  papa,  answer  me,  please,  please ! 

Melchior’s  body  shook  like  a boneless  thing,  and  all  but  fell. 
His  head  flopped  towards  Jean-Christophe;  he  looked  at  him 
and  babbled  incoherently  and  irritably.  When  Jean-Chris- 
tophe’s  eyes  met  those  clouded  eyes  he  was  seized  mth  panic 
terror.  He  ran  away  to  the  other  end  of  the  room,  and  threw 
himself  on  his  knees  by  the  bed,  and  buried  his  face  in  the 
clothes.  He  remained  so  for  some  time.  Melchior  swung 
heavily  on  the  chair,  sniggering.  Jean-Christophe  stopped  his 
ears,  so  as  not  to  hear  him,  and  trembled.  What  was  happen- 
ing within  him  was  inexpressible.  It  was  a terrible  upheaval — 
terror,  sorrow,  as  though  for  some  one  dead,  some  one  dear  and 
honored. 

No  one  came;  they  were  left  alone.  Night  fell,  and  Jean- 
Christbphe’s  fear  grew  as  the  minutes  passed.  He  could  not 
help  listening,  and  his  blood  froze  as  he  heard  the  voice  that 
he  did  not  recognize.  The  silence  made  it  all  the  more  terri- 
fying; the  limping  clock  beat  time  for  the  senseless  babbling. 
He  could  bear  it  no  longer;  he  wished  to  fly.  But  he  had 
to  pass  his  father  to  get  out,  and  Jean-Christophe  shuddered 
at  the  idea  of  seeing  those  eyes  again;  it  seemed  to  him  that 
he  must  die  if  he  did.  He  tried  to  creep  on  hands  and^ 
knees  to  the  door  of  the  room.  He  could  not  breathe ; he 
would  not  look;  he  stopped  at  the  least  movement  from  Mel-  ^ 
chior,  whose  feet  he  couM  see  under  the  table.  One  of  the 
drunken  man’s  legs  trembled.  Jean-Christophe  reached  the 
door.  With  one  trembling  hand  he  pushed  the  handle,  but 
in  his  terror  he  let  go.  It  shut  to  again.  Melchior  turned 
to  look.  The  chair  on  which  he  was  balanced  toppled  over ; 
he  fell  down  with  a crash.  Jean-Christophe  in  his  terror  had 
no  strength  left  for  flight.  He  remained  glued  to  the  wall, 
looking  at  his  father  stretched  there  at  his  feet,  and  he  cried 
for  help. 

His  fall  sobered  Melchior  a little.  He  cursed  and  swore, 
and  thumped  on  the  chair  that  had  played  him  such  a trick. 
He  tried  vainly  to  get  up,  and  then  did  manage  to  sit  up  with 


/ 


44 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


/. 


his  back  resting  against  the  table,  and  he  recognized  his 
surroundings.  He  saw  Jean-Christophe‘  crying;  he  called 
him.  Jean-Christophe  wanted  to  run  away;  he  could  not  stir. 
Melchior  called  him  again,  and  as  the  child  did  not  come,  he 
swore  angrily.  Jean-Christophe  went  near  him,  trembling  in 
every  limb.  Melchior  drew  the  boy  near  him,  and  made  him  sit 
on  his  knees.  He  began  by  pulling  his  ears,  and  in  a thick, 
stuttering  voice  delivered  a homily  on  the  respect  due  from  a 
son  to  his  father.  Then  he  went  off  suddenly  on  a new  train 
of  thought,  and  made  him  jump  in  his  arms  while  he  rattled 
off  silly  jokes.  He  wriggled  with  laughter.  From  that  he 
passed  immediately  to  melancholy  ideas.  He  commiserated  the 
: boy  and  himself ; he  hugged  him  so  that  he  was  like  to  choke,  - 
i covered  him  with  kisses  and  tears,  and  finally  rocked  him  in- 
1 his  arms,  intoning  the  De  Profundis.  Jean-Christophe  made  no  ; 
effort  to  break  loose ; he  was  frozen  with  horror.  Stified  against ; 
his  fathers  bosom,  feeling  his  breath  hiccoughing  and  srnelling 
of  wine  upon  his  face,  wet  with  his  kisses  and  repulsive  tears,! 
he  was  in  an  agony  of  fear  and  disgust.  He  would  have  ? 
screamed,  but  no  sound  would  come  from  his  lips.  He  re- ; 
mained  in  this  horrible  condition  for  an  age,  as  it  seemed  to 
him,  until  the  door  opened,  and  Louisa  came  in  with  a basket , 
of  linen  on  her  arm.  She  gave  a cry,  let  the  basket  fall,  rushed  ' 
at  Jean-Christophe,  and  with  a violence  which  seemed  incredible] 
in  her  she  wrenched  MelchioFs  arm,  crying:  . i 

Drunken,  drunken  wretch ! 

Her  eyes  fiashed  with  anger.  j 

Jean-Christophe  thought  his  fath^  was  going  to  kill  her.^ 
But  Melchior  was  so  startled  by  the  threatening  appearance 
of  his  wife  that  he  made  no  reply,  and  began  to  weep.  He 
rolled  on  the  fioor;  he  beat  his  head* against  the  furniture, 
and  said  that  she  was  right,  that  he  was  a drunkard,  that 
he  brought  misery  upon  his  family,  and  was  ruining  his  poor 
children,  and  wished  he  were  dead.  Louisa  had  contemptuously 
turned  her  back  on  him.  She  carried  Jean-Christophe  into  the 
next  room,  and  caressed  him  and  tried  to  comfort  him.  The 
boy  went  on  trembling,  and  did  not  answer  his  mothers  ques-i 
tions:  then  he  burst  out  sobbinsr.  Louisa  bathed  his  face  withl 


THE  DAWN 


45 


him.  In  the  end  they  were  both  comforted.  She  knelt,  and 
made  him  kneel  by  her  side.  They  prayed  to  God  to  cure  father 
of  his  disgusting  habit,  and  make  him  the  kind,  good  man  that 
he  used  to  be.  Louisa  put  the  child  to  bed.  He  wanted  her  to 
stay  by  his  bedside  and  hold  his  hand.  Louisa  spent  part 
of  the  night  sitting  on  Jean-Christophe’s  bed.  He  was  feverish. 
The  drunken  man  snored  on  the  floor. 

Some  time  after  that,  one  day  at  school,  when  Jean-Chris- 
tophe  was  spending  his  time  watching  the  flies  on  the  ceiling, 
and  thumping  his  neighbors,  to  make  them  fall  off  the  form, 
the  schoolmaster,  who  had  taken  a dislike  to  him,  because  he 
was  always  fldgeting  and  laughing,  and  would  never  learn  any- 
thing, made  an  unhappy  allusion.  Jean-Christophe  had  fallen 
down  himself,  and  the  schoolmaster  said  he  seemed  to  be  l\ke 
to  follow  brilliantly  in  the  footsteps  of  a certain  well-known 
person.  All  the  boys  burst  out  laughing,  and  some  of  them 
took  upon  themselves  to  point  the  allusion  with  comment  both 
lucid  and  vigorous.  Jean-Christophe  got  up,  livid  with  shame, 
seized  his  ink-pot,  and  hurled  it  with  all  his  strength  at  the 
nearest  boy  whom  he  saw  laughing.  The  schoolmaster  fell  on^ 
him  and  beat  him.  He  was  thrashed,  made  to  kneel,  and  set 
to  do  an  enormous  imposition. 

He  went  home,  pale  and  storming,  though  he  said  never  a 
word.  He  declared  frigidly  that  he  would  not  go  to  school 
again.  They  paid  no  attention  to  what  he  said.  Next  morning, 
when  his  mother  reminded  him  that  it  was  time  to  go,  he 
replied  quietly  that  he  had  said  that  he  was  not  going  any  more. 
In  vain  Louisa  begged  and  screamed  and  threatened;  it  was 
no  use.  He  stayed  sitting  in  his  corner,  obstinate.  Melchior 
thrashed  him.  He  howled,  but  every  time  they  bade  him  go 
after  the  thrashing  was  over  he  replied  angrily,  No!  They 
asked  him  at  least  to  say  why.  He  clenched  his  teeth,  and 
would  not.  Melchior  took  hold  of  him,  carried  him  to  school, 
and  gave  him  into  the  master’s  charge.  They  set  him  on  his 
form,  and  he  began  methodically  to  break  everything  within 
reach— his  inkstand,  his  pen.  He  tore  up  his  copy-book  and 
lessoh-book,  all  quite  openly,  with  his  eye  on  the  schoolmaster, 
pTRovocative.  They  shut  him  up  in  a dark  room.  A few  mo- 
ments later  the  schoolmaster  found  him  with  his  handkerchief 


46 


JEAN-CHRISTOPHB 


j . tied  round  his  neck,  tugging  with  all  his  strength  at  the  two 
5 J ends  of  it.  He  was  trying  to  strangle  himself. 

I They  had  to  send  him  back. 


I 


I 


\/ 


Jean-Christophe  was  impervious  to  sickness.  He  had  in- 
herited from  his  father  and  grandfather  their  robust  constitu- 
tions. They  were  not  mollycoddles  in  that  family;  well  or  ill, 
they  never  worried,  and  nothing  could  bring  about  any  change 
in  the  habits  of  the  two  Kraffts,  father  and  son.  They  went, 
out  winter  and  summer,  in  all  weathers,  and  stayed  for  hours 
together  out  in  rain  or  sun,  sometimes  bareheaded  and  with 
their  coats  open,  from  carelessness  or  bravado,  and  walked 
for  miles  without  being  tired,  and  they  looked  with  pity  and 
disdain  upon  poor  Louisa,  who  never  said  anything,  but  had 
to  stop.  She  would  go  pale,  and  her  legs  would  swell,  and 
her  heart  would  thump.  . Jean-Christophe  was  not  far  from 
sharing  the  scorn  of  his  mother;  he  did  not  understand  people’ 
being  ill.  When  he  fell,  or  knocked  himself,  or  cut  himself,* 
or  burned  himself,  he  did  not  cry;  but  he  was  angry  with^i 
the  thing  that  had  injured  him.  His  father’s  brutalities  and 
tli ' roughness  of  his  little  playmates,  the  urchins  of  the  street, 
with  whom  he  used  to  fight,  hardened  him.  He  was  not  afraid 
of  blows,  and  more  than  once  he  returned  home  with  bleeding: 
nose  and  bruised  forehead.  One  day  he  had  to  be  wrenched( 
away,  almost  suffocated,  from  one  of  these  fierce  tussles  in| 
which  he  had  bowled  over  his  adversary,  who  was  savagely- 
banging  his  head  on  the  ground.  That  seemed  natural  enoughs 
to  him,  for  he  was  prepared  to  do  unto  others  as  they  did  unto^ 
himself. 

And  yet  he  was  afraid  of  all  sorts  of  things,  and  although 
no  one  knew  it — for  he  was  very  proud — nothing  brought  him 
so  much  suffering  during  a part  of  his  childhood  as  these  same 
terrors.  For  two  or  three  years  especially  they  gnawed  at  him 
like  a disease. 

He  was  afraid  of  the  mysterious  something  that  lurks  in 
darkness — evil  powers  that  seemed  to  lie  in  wait  for  his  life, 
the  roaring  of  monsters  which  fearfully  haunt  the  mind  of 
every  child  and  appear  in  everything  that  he  sees,  the^  relic' 
perhaps  of  a form  long  dead,  hallucinations  of  the  first  days 


THE  DAWN 


47 


after  emerging  from  chaos,  from  the  fearful  slumber  in  his 
mother's  womb,  from  the  awakening  of  the  larva  from  the 
depths  of  matter. 

He  was  afraid  of  the  garret  door.  It  opened  on  to  the  stairs, 
and  was  almost  always  ajar.  When  he  had  to  pass  it  he  felt 
his  heart  beating;  he  would  spring  forward  and  jump  by  it 
without  looking.  It  seemed  to  him  that  there  was  some  one 
or  something  behind  it.  When  it  was  closed  he  heard  distinctly 
something  moving  behind  it.  That  was  not  surprising,  for 
there  were  large  rats;  but  he  imagined  a monster,  with  rattling 
bones,  and  flesh  hanging  in  rags,  a horse's  head,  horrible  and 
terrifying  eyes,  shapeless.  He  did  not  want  to  think  of  it, 
but  did  so  in  spite  of  himself.  With  trembling  hand  he  would 
make  sure  that  the  door  was  locked;  but  that  did  not  keep  him 
from  turning  round  ten  times  as  he  went  downstairs. 

He  was  afraid  of  the  night  outside.  Sometimes  he  used  to 
stay  late  with  his  grandfather,  or  was  sent  out  in  the  even- 
ing on  some  errand.  Old  Krafft  lived  a little  outside  the  town 
in  the  last  house  on  the  Cologne  road.  Between  the  house  and 
the  first  lighted  windows  of  the  town  there  was  a distance  of 
two  or  three  hundred  yards,  which  seemed  three  times  as  long 
to  Jean-Christophe.  There  were  places  where  the  road  twisted 
and  it  was  impossible  to  see  anything.  The  country  was 
deserted  in  the  evening,  the  earth  grew  black,'  and  the  sky 
was  awfully  pale.  When  he  came  out  from  the  hedges  that 
lined  the  road,  and  climbed  up  the  slope,  he  could  still  see 
a yellowish  gleam  on  the  horizon,  but  it  gave  no  light,  and 
was  more  oppressive  than  the  night ; it  made  the  darkness 
only  darker;  it  was  a deathly  light.  The  clouds  came  down 
almost  to  earth.  The  hedges  grew  enormous  and  moved.  The 
gaunt  trees  were  like  grotesque  old  men.  The  sides  of  the 
wood  were  stark  white.  The  darkness  moved.  There  were 
(dwarfs  sitting  in  the  ditches,  lights  in  the  grass,  fearful  flying 
things  in  the  air,  shrill  cries  of  insects  coming  from  nowhere. 
Jean-Christophe  was  always  in  anguish,  expecting  some  fear- 
some or  strange  putting  forth  of  Nature.  He  would  run,  with 
his  heart  leaping  in  his  bosom. 

When  he  saw  the  light  in  his  grandfather's  room  he  would 
gain  confidence.  But  worst  of  all  was  when  old  Krafft  was 


i 


48 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


/ 


not  at  home.  That  was  most  terrifying.  The  old  house^  lost 
in  the  country,  frightened  the  boy  even  in  daylight.  He  forgot 
his  fears  when  his  grandfather  was  there,  but  sometimes  the 
old  man  would  leave  him  alone,  and  go  out  without  warning 
him.  Jean-Christophe  did  not  mind  that.  The  room  waa 
quiet.  Everything  in  it  was  familiar  and  kindly.  There  was 
a great  white  wooden  bedstead,  by  the  bedside  was  a great 
Bible  on  a shelf,  artificial  flowers  were  on  the  mantelpiece, 
with  photographs  of  the  old  man's  two  wives  and  eleven  chil- 
dren— and  at  the  bottom  of  each  photograph  he  had  written 
the  date  of  birth  and  death — on  the  walls  were  framed  texts 
and  vile  chromolithographs  of  Mozart  and  Beethoven.  A little 
piano  stood  in  one  corner,  a great  violoncello  in  another;  rows 
J*  of  books  higgledy-piggledy,  pipes,  and  in  the  window  pots  of 
geraniums.  It  was  like  being  surrounded  with  friends.  The  « 

old  man  could  be  heard  moving  about  in  the  next  room,  and  ] 

planing  or  hammering,  and  talking  to  himself,  calling  himself  J 

an  idiot,  or  singing  in  a loud  voice,  improvising  a potpourri 
of  scraps  of  chants  and  sentimental  Lieder,  warlike  marches,  i 

and  drinking  songs.  Here  was  shelter  and  refuge.  Jean-  1 

Christophe  would  sit  in  the  great  armchair  by  the  window,  with  i 

a book  on  his  knees,  bending  over  the  pictures  and  losing  him-  ■ 

self  in  them.  The  day  would  die  down,  his  ejes  would  grow  ] 

weary,  and  then  he  would  look  no  more,  and  fall  into  vague  j 

dreaming.  The  wheels  of  a cart  would  rumble  by  along  the  | 

road,  a cow  would  moo  in  the  fields;  the  bells  of  the  town,  ] 

weary  and  sleepy,  would  ring  the  evening  Angelus.  Vague  ] 

desires,  happy  presentiments,  would  awake  in  the  heart  of  the  ;* 

dreaming  child.  | 

Suddenly  Jean-Christophe  would  awake,  filled  with  dull  un- 
easiness.  He  would  raise  his  eyes — night!  He  would  listen — 
silence!  His  grandfather  had  just  gone  out.  He  shuddered,  f 

He  leaned  out  of  the  window  to  try  to  see  him.  The  road  was  m 

I deserted;  things  began  to  take  on  a threatening  aspect.  Oh  | 

/ God!  If  that  should  be  coming!  What?  He  could  not  telL 
/ The  fearful  thing.  The  doors  were  not  properly  shut.  The 
! wooden  stairs  creaked  as  under  a footstep.  The  boy  leaped 
up,  dragged  the  armchair,  the  two  chairs  and  the  table,  to 
the  most  remote  corner  of  the  room;  he  made  a barrier  .»yf 


I 


THE  DAWH 


49 


them;  the  armchair  against  the  wall,  a chair  to  the  right,  a 
chair  to  the  left,  and  the  table  in  front  of  him.  Jn  the  middle 
he  planted  a pair  of  steps,  and,  perched  on  top  with  his  book 
and  other  books,  like  provisions  against  a siege,  he  breathed 
again,  having  decided  in  his  childish  imagination  that  the 
enemy  could  not  pass  the  barrier — that  was  not  to  be  allowed. 

But  the  enemy  would  creep  forth,  even  from  his  book.  Among 
the  old  books  which  the  old  man  had  picked  up  were  some 
with  pictures  which  made  a profound  impression  on  the  child: 
they  attracted  and  yet  terrified  him.  There  were  fantastic 
visions — temptations  of  St.  Anthony — in  which  skeletons  of 
birds  hung  in  bottles,  and  thousands  of  eggs  writhe  like  worms 
in  disemboweled  frogs,  and  heads  walk  on  feet,  and  asses  play 
trumpets,  and  household  utensils  and  corpses  of  animals  walk 
gravely,  wrapped  in  great  cloths,  bowing  like  old  ladies.  Jean- 
Christophe  was  horrified  by  them,  but  always  returned  to  them, 
drawn  on  by  disgust.  He  would  look  at  them  for  a long  time, 
and  every  now  and  then  look  furtively  about  him  to  see  what 
was  stirring  in  the  folds  of  the  curtains.  A picture  of  a flayed 
man  in  an  anatomy  book  was  still  more  horrible  to  him.  He 
trembled  as  he  turned  the  page  when  he  came  to  the  place 
v/here  it  was  in  the  book.  This  shapeless  medley  was  grimly 
etched  for  him.*^,  The  creative  power  inherent  in  every  child’s 
mind  filled  out  the  meagerness  of  the  setting  of  them.  He 
saw  no  difference  between  the  daubs  and  the  reality.  At  night 
they  had  an  even  more  powerful  influence  over  his  dreams  than 
the  living  things  that  he  saw  during  the  day. 

He  was  afraid  to  sleep.  For  several  years  nightmares  poisoned 
his  rest.  He  wandered  in  cellars,  and  through  the  manhole 
saw  the  grinning  flayed  man  entering.  He  was  alone  in  a 
room,  and  he  heard  a stealthy  footstep  in  the  corridor;  he 
hurled  himself  against  the  door  to  close  it,  and  was  just  in 
time  to  hold  the  handle;  but  it  was  turned  from  the  outside; 
he  could  not  turn  the  key,  his  strength  left  him,  and  he  cried 
for  help.  He  was  with  his  family,  and  suddenly  their  faces 
changed;  they  did  crazy  things.  He  was  reading  quietly,  and 
he  felt  that  an  invisible  being  was  all  round  him.  He  tried 
to  fly,  but  felt  himself  bound.  He  tried  to  cry  out,  but  he 
was  gagged.  A loathsome  grip  was  about  his  neck.  He  awoke. 


50 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


/ 


suffocating,  and  with  his  teeth  chattering ; and  he  went  on 
trembling  lon^  after  he  was  awake;  he  could  not  be  rid  of  his 
agony. 

The  room  in  which  he  slept  was  a hole  without  door  or 
windows;  an  old  curtain  hung  up  by  a curtain-rod  over  the 
entrance  was  all  that  separated  it  from  the  room  of  his  father 
and  mother.  The  thick  air  stifled  him.  His  brother,  who  slept 
in  the  same  bed,  used  to  kick  him.  His  head  burned,  and  he 
was  a prey  to  a sort  of  hallucination  in  which  all  the  little 
troubles  of  the  day  reappeared  inflnitely  magnified.  In  this 
state  of  nervous  tension,  bordering  on  delirium,  the  least  shock 
was  an  agony  to  him.  The  creaking  of  a plank  terrified  him. 
His  father’s  breathing  took  on  fantastic  proportions.  It  seemed 
to  be  no  longer  a human  breathing,  and  the  monstrous  sound 
was  horrible  to  him;  it  seemed  to  him  that  there  must  be  a 
beast  sleeping  there.  The  night  crushed  him;  it  would  never 
end;  it  must  always  be  so;  he  was  lying  there  for  months  and 
months.  He  gasped  for  breath;  he  half  raised  himself  on 
his  bed,  sat  up,  dried  his  sweating  face  with  his  shirt-sleeve. 
Sometimes  he  nudged  his  brother  Eodolphe  to  wake  him  up; 
but  Eodolphe  moaned,  drew  away  from  him  the  rest  of  the 
bedclothes,  and  went  on  sleeping. 

So  he  stayed  in  feverish  agony  until  a pale  beam  of  light 
appeared  on  the  floor  below  the  curtain.  This  timorous  pale- 
ness of  the  distant  dawn  suddenly  brought  him  peace.  He 
felt  the  light  gliding  into  the  room,  when  it  was  still  impossible 
to  distinguish  it  from  darkness.  Then  his  fever  would  die 
down,  his  blood  would  grow  calm,  like  a flooded  river  returning 
to  its  bed ; an  even  warmth  would  flow  through  all  his  body,  and 
his  eyes,  burning  from  sleeplessness,  would  close  in  spite  of 
himself. 

In  the  evening  it  was  terrible  to  him  to  see  the  approach 
of  the  hour  of  sleep.  He  vowed  that  he  would  not  give  way 
to  it,  to  watch  the  whole  night  through,  fearing  his  nightmares. 
But  in  the  end  weariness  always  overcame  him,  and  it  was 
always  when  he  was  least  on  his  guard  that  the  monsters 
returned. 

Fearful  night!  So  sweet  to  most  children,  so  terrible  to 
some!  ...  He  was  afraid  to  sleep.  He  was  afraid  of  not 


i 

{ 

< 

i 

i 

1 


THE  DAWN 


51 


sleeping.  Waking  or  sleeping,  he  was  surrounded  by  monstrous 
shapes,  the  phantoms  of  his  own  brain,  the  larvae  floating  in 
the  half-day  and  twilight  of  childhood,  as  in  the  dark  chiaros- 
curo of  sickness. 

But  these  fancied  terrors  were  soon  to  be  blotted  out  in 
the  great  Fear — that  which  is  in  the  hearts  of  all  men;  that 
Fear  which  Wisdom  does  in  vain  preen  itself  on  forgetting  or 
denying — Death. 

One  day  when  he  was  rummaging  in  a cupboard,  he  came 
upon  several  things  that  he  did  not  know — a child's  frock  and 
a striped  bonnet.  He  took  them  in  triumph  to  his  mother, 
who,  instead  of  smiling  at  him,  looked  vexed,  and  bade  him 
take  them  back  to  the  place  where  he  had  found  them.  Wlien 
he  hesitated  to  obey,  and  asked  her  why,  she  snatched  them 
from  him  without  reply,  and  put  them  on  a shelf  where  he 
could  not  reach  them.  Boused  to  curiosity,  he  plied  her  with 
questions.  At  last  she  told  him  that  there  had  been  a little 
brother,  who  had  died  before  Jean-Christophe  came  into  the 
world.  He  was  taken  aback — ^he  had  never  heard  tell  of  him. 
He  was  silent  for  a moment,  and  then  tried  to  find  out  more. 
His  mother  seemed  to  be  lost  in  thought ; but  she  told  him  that 
the  little  brother  was  called  Jean-Christophe  like  himself,  but 
was  more  sensible.  He  put  more  questions  to  her,  but  she  would 
not  reply  readily.  She  told  him  only  that  his  brother  was  in 
Heaven,  and  was  praying  for  them  all.  Jean-Christophe  could 
get  no  more  out  of  her;  she  bade  him  be  quiet,  and  to  let  her 
go  on  with  her  work.  She  seem.ed  to  be  absorbed  in  her  sewing; 
she  looked  anxious,  and  did  not  rai.se  her  eyes.  But  after  some 
time  she  looked  at  him  where  he  was  in  the  corner,  whither  he 
had  retired  to  sulk,  began  to  smile,  and  told  him  to  go  and  play 
outside. 

These  scraps  of  conversation  profoundly  agitated  Jean-Chris- 
tophe. There  had  been  a child,  a little  boy,  belonging  to  his 
mother,  like  himself,  bearing  the  same  name,  almost  exactly 
the  same,  and  he  was  dead ! Dead ! He  did  not  exactly  know 
what  that  was,  but  it  was  something  terrible.  And  they  never 
talked  of  this  other  Jean-Christophe;  he  was  quite  forgotten. 
It  would  be  the  same  with  him  if  he  were  to  die?  This  thought 


62 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


/ 


was  with  him  still  in  the  evening  at  table  with  his  family, 
when  he  saw  them  all  laughing  and  talking  of  trifles.  So^  then, 
it  was  possible  that  they  would  be  gay  after  he  was  dead! 

Oh ! he  never  would  have  believed  that  his  mother  could  be 
selflsh  enough  to  laugh  after  the  death  of  her  little  boy!  He 
hated  them  all.  He  wanted  to  weep  for  himself,  for  his  own 
death,  in  advance.  At  the  same  time  he  wanted  to  ask  a 
whole  heap  of  questions,  but  he  dared  not;  he  remembered  the 
voice  in  which  his  mother  had  bid  him  be  quiet.  At  last  he 
could  contain  himself  no  longer,  and  one  night  when  he  had 
gone  to  bed,  and  Louisa  came  to  kiss  him,  he  asked: 

Mother,  did  he  sleep  in  my  bed  ? 

The  poor  woman  trembled,  and,  trying  to  take  on  an  in- 
different tone  of'  voice,  she  asked : 

^^who?^^  : 

The  little  boy  who  is  dead,’^  said  Jean-Christophe  in  a ■ 
whisper.  | 

His  mother  clutched  him  with  her  hands.  j 

^^Be  quiet — quiet,’^  she  said. 

Her  voice  trembled.  Jean-Christophe,  whose  head  was  lean- 
ing against  her  bosom,  heard  her  heart  beating.  There  was  a 
moment  of  silence,  then  she  said:  ! 

You  must  never  talk  of  that,  my  dear.  ...  Go  to  sleep. 
...  No,  it  was  not  his  bed.^^ 

She  kissed  him.  He  thought  he  felt  her  cheek  wet  against  | 
ihis.  He  wished  he  could  have  been  sure  of  it.  He  vras  a little 
\ /comforted.  There  was  grief  in  her  then!  Then  he  doubted  it  ^ 
\r  again  the  next  moment,  when  he  heard  her  in  the  next  room 
talking  in  a quiet,  ordinary  voice.  Which  was  true — that  or  | 
what  had  just  been  ? He  turned  about  for  long  in  his  bed  with-  |i 
out  flnding  any  answer.  He  wanted  his  mother  to  suffer ; not  i! 
that  he  also  did  not  suffer  in  the  knowledge  that  she  was  sad,  | 
but  it  would  have  done  him  so  much  good,  in  spite  of  every-  | 
\ thing ! He  would  have  felt  himself  less  alone.  He  slept,  and  | 
\ next  day  thought  no  more  of  it.  ! 

Some  weeks  afterwards  one  of  the  urchins  with  whom  he 
played  in  the  street  did  not  come  at  the  usual  time.  One  of 
them  said  that  he  was  ill,  and  they  got  used  to  not  seeing  him 
in  their  games.  It  was  explained,  it  was  quite  simple.  One 


THE  DAWN 


53 


evening  Jean-Christophe  had  gone  to  bed;  it  was  early,  and 
from  the  recess  in  which  his  bed  was,  he  saw  the  light  in  the 
room.  There  was  a knock  at  the  door.  A neighbor  had  come 
to  have  a chat.  He  listened  absently,  telling  himself  stories 
as  usnal.  The  words  of  their  talk  did  not  reach  him.  Suddenly 
he  heard  the  neighbor  say : “ He  is  dead.”  His  blood  stopped, 
for  he  had  understood  who  was  dead.  He  listened  and  held 
his  breath.  His  parents  cried  out.  Melchior’s  booming  voice 
said : 

“Jean-Christophe,  do  you  hear?  Poor  Fritz  is  dead.” 

Jean-Christophe  made  an  effort,  and  replied  quietly: 

“ Yes,  papa.” 

His  bosom  was  drawn  tight  as  in  a vise. 


Melchior  went  on : 

“"Yes,  papa.’  Is  that  all  you  say?  You  are  not  grieved 
by  it.” 

Louisa,  who  understood  the  child,  said: 

“ ’Ssh ! Let  him  sleep ! ” • j 

And  they  talked  in  whispers.  But  Jean-Christophe,  pricking 
his  ears,  gathered  all  the  details  of  illness— typhoid  fever,  cold 
baths,  delirium,  the  parents’  grief.  He  could  not  breathe, 
a lump  in  his  throat  choked  him.  He  shuddered.  All  these 
horrible  things  took  shape  in  his  mind.  Above  all,  he  gleaned 
that  the  disease  was  contagious — that  is,  that  he  also  might  die 
in  the  same  way — and  terror  froze  him,  for  he  remembered 
that  he  had  shaken  hands  with  Fritz  the  last  time  he  had  seen 
him,  and  that  very  day  had  gone  past  the  house.  But  he  made 
no  sound,  so  as  to  avoid  having  to  talk,  and  when  his  father^ 
after  the  neighbor  had  gone,  asked  him:  “Jean-Christophe, 
are  you  asleep  ? ” he  did  not  reply.  He  heard  Melchior  saying 
to  Louisa : 

""  The  boy  has  no  heart.” 

Louisa  did  not  reply,  but  a moment  later  she  came  and 
gently  raised  the  curtain  and  looked  at  the  little  bed.  Jean- 
Christophe  only  just  had  time  to  close  his  eyes  and  imitate 
the  regular  breathing  which  his  brothers  made  when  they  were 
asleep.  Louisa  went  away  on  tip-toe.  And  yet  how  he  wanted 
to  keep  her!  How  he  wanted  to  tell  her  that  he  was  afraid, 
and  to  ask  her  to  save  him,  or  at  least  to  comfort  him!  But 

f 


54  JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 


he  was  afraid  of  their  laughing  at  him,  and  treating  him  as  a 
coward;  and  besides,  he  knew  only  too  well  that  nothing  that 
they  might  say  would  be  any  good.  And  for  hours  he  lay  there 
in  agony,  thinking  that  he  felt  the  disease  creeping  over  him, 
and  pains  in  his  head,  a stricture  of  the  heart,  and  thinking 
in  terror : “ It  is  the  end.  I am  ill.  I am  going  to  die.  I am 
going  to  die ! ” . . . Once  he  sat  up  in  his  bed  and  called  to 
his  mother  in  a low  voice;  but  they  were  asleep,  and  he  dared 
not  wake  them. 

From  that  time  on  his  childhood  was  poisoned  by  the  idea 
of  death.  His  nerves  delivered  him  up  to  all  sorts  of  little 
baseless  sicknesses,  to  depression,  to  sudden  transports,  and  fits 
of  choking.  His  imagination  ran  riot  with  these  troubles,  and 
.thought  it  saw  in  all  of  them  the  murderous  beast  which  was 
to  rob  him  of  his  life.  How  many  times  he  suffered  agonies, 
with  his  mother  sitting  only  a few  yards  away  from  him,  and 
she  guessing  nothing!  For  in  his  cowardice  he  was  brave 
enough  to  conceal  all  his  terror  in  a strange  jumble  of  feeling 
— pride  in  not  turning  to  others,  shame  of  being  afraid,  and 
the  scrupulousness  of  a tenderness  which  forbade  him  to  trouble 
his  mother.  But  he  never  ceased  to  think : “ This  time  I am 
ill.  I am  seriously  ill.  It  is  diphtheria.  . . .”  He  had  chanced 
on  the  word  “diphtheria.”  . . . “Dear  God!  not  this 
time!  ...” 

He  had  religious  ideas : he  loved  to  believe  what  his  mother 
had  told  him,  that  after  death  the  soul  ascended  to  the  Lord, 
and  if  it  were  pious  entered  into  the  garden  of  paradise.  But 
the  idea  of  this  journey  rather  frightened  than  attracted  him. 

I He  was  not  at  all  envious  of  the  children  whom  God,  as  a 
recompense,  according  to  his  mother,  took  in  their  sleep  and 
: called  to  Him  without  having  made  them  suffer.  He  trembled, 
as  he  went  to  sleep,  for  fear  that  God  should  indulge  this 
’ whimsy  at  his  expense.  It  must  be  terrible  to  be  taken  suddenly 
from  the  warmth  of  one’s  bed  and  dragged  through  the  void 
into  the  presence  of  -God.  He  imagined  God  as  an  enormous 
sun,  with  a voice  of  thunder.  How  it  must  hurt!  It  must 
burn  the  eyes,  ears — all  one’s  soul ! Then,  God  could  punish — 
you  never  know.  . . . And  besides,  that  did  not  prevent  all 


THE  DAWN 


55 


could  guess  them  from  what  he  had  heard— your  body  in  a 
box,  all  alone  at  the  bottom  of  a hole,  lost  in  the  crowd  of  those 
revolting  cemeteries  to  which  he  was  taken  to  pray.  . . God! 
God!  How  sad!  how  sad!  . . . 

And  yet  it  was  not  exactly  joyous  to  live,  and  be  hungry, 
and  see  your  father  drunk,  and  to  be  beaten,  to  suffer  in  so 
many  ways  from  the  wickedness  of  other  children,  from  the 
insulting  pity  of  grown-up  persons,  and  to  be  understood  by 
no  one,  not  even  by  your  mother.  Everybody  humiliates  you, 
no  one  loves  you.  You  are  alone — alone,  and  matter  so  little! 
Yes;  but  it  was  just  this  that  made  him  want  to  live.  He 
felt  in  himself  a surging  power  of  wrath.  A strange  thing,  that 
power!  It  could  do  nothing  yet;  it  was  as  though  it  were 
afar  off  and  gagged,  swaddled,  paralyzed;  he  had  no  idea  what 
it  wanted,  what,  later  on,  it  would  be.  But  it  was  in  him; 
he  was  sure  of  it ; he  felt  it  stirring  and  crying  out.  To-morrow 
— to-morrow,  what  a voyage  he  would  take!  He  had  a savage 
desire  to  live,  to  punish  the  wicked,  to  do  great  things.  “ Oh ! 
but  how  I will  live  when  I am  . . .”  he  pondered  a little — 
“ when  I am  eighteen ! ” Sometimes  he  put  it  at  twenty-one ; 
that  was  the  extreme  limit.  He  thought  that  was  enough  for 
the  domination  of  the  world.  He  thought  of  the  heroes  dearest 
to  him — of  Napoleon,  and  of  that  other  more  remote  hero, 
whom  he  preferred,  Alexander  the  Great.  Surely  he  would  be 
like  them  if  only  he  lived  for  another  twelve — ten  years.  He 
never  thought  of  pitying  those  who  died  at  thirty.  They  were 
old;  they  had  lived  their  lives;  it  was  their  fault  if  they  had 
failed.  But  to  die  now  . . . despair!  Too  terrible  to  pass 
while  yet  a little  child,  and  forever  to  be  in  the  minds  of  men 
a little  boy  whom  everybody  thinks  he  has  the  right  to  scold ! 
He  wept  with  rage  at  the  thought,  as  though  he  were  already 
dead. 

This  agony  of  death  tortured  his  childish  years — corrected 
only  by  disgust  with  all  life  and  the  sadness  of  his  own. 

It  was  in  the  midst  of  these  gloomy  shadows,  in  the  stifling 
night  that  every  moment  seemed  to  intensify  about  him,  that 
there  began  to  shine,  like  a star  lost  in  the  dark  abysm  of  space, 
the  light  which  was  to  illuminate  his  life:  divine  music.  . . . 


56 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


/ 


\/ 


His  grandfather  gave  the  children  an  old  piano,  which  one 
of  his  clients,  anxious  to  be  rid  of  it,  had  asked  him  to  take. 
His  patient  ingenuity  had  almost  put  it  in  order.  The  present 
had  not  been  very  well  received.  Louisa  thought  her  room 
already  too  small,  without  filling  it  up  any  more;  and  Melchior 
said  that  Jean  Michel  had  not  ruined  himself  over  it:  just 
firewood.  Only  Jean-Christophe  was  glad  of  it  without  exactly 
knowing  why.  It  seemed  to  him  a magic  box,  full  of  marvelous 
stories,  just  like  the  ones  in  the  fairy-book — a volume  of  the 
Thousand  and  One  Nights ’’—which  his  grandfather  read 
, to  him  sometimes  to  their  mutual  delight.  He  had  heard  hjs 
father  try  the  piano  on  the  day  of  its  arrival,  and  draw  from  it  a 
little  rain  of  arpeggios  like  the  drops  that  a puff  of  wind  shakes 
from  the  wet  branches  of  a tree  after  a shower.  He  clapped 
his  hands,  and  cried  “ Encore ! ” but  Melchior  scornfully  closed  ‘ 
the  piano,  saying  that  it  was  worthless.  Jean-Christophe  did  ; 
not  insist,  hut  after  that  he  was  always  hovering  about  the 
instrument.  As  soon  as  no  one  was  near  he  would  raise  the  ' 
lid,  and  softly  press  down  a key,  just  as  if  he  were  moving  | 
with  his  finger  the  living  shell  of  some  great  insect;  he  wanted 
to  push  out  the  creature  that  was  locked  up  in  it.  Sometimes  ■■ 
in  his  haste  he  would  strike  too  hard,  and  then  his  mother  would  i 
cry  out,  “Will  you  not  be  quiet?  Don’t  go  touching  every-  j 
thing ! ” or  else  he  would  pinch  himself  cruelly  in  closing  the  ^ 
piano,  and  make  piteous  faces  as  he  sucked  his  bruised  fin-  | 
gers.  ...  ] 

Now  his  greatest  joy  is  when  his  mother  is  gone  out  for  a J 
day’s  service,  or  to  pay  some  visit  in  the  town.  He  listens  as  | 
she  goes  down  the  stairs,  and  into  the  street,  and  away.  He  I 
is  alone.  He  opens  the  piano,  and  brings,  up  a chair,  and  perches  | 
on  it.  His  shoulders  just  about  reach  the  keyboard;  it  is  1 
enough  for  what  he  wants.  Why  does  he  wait  until  he  is  alone  ? 1 
No  one  would  prevent  his  playing  so  long  as  he  did  not  make  i 
too  much  noise.  But  he  is  ashamed  before  the  others,  and  i 
dare  not.  And  then  they  talk  and  move  about:  that  spoils  his  | 
pleasure.  It  is  so  much  more  beautiful  when  he  is  alone!  | 
Jean-Christophe  holds  his  breath  so  that  the  silence  may  be  | 
6V6I1  srrGatGr.  and  also  honanso  ho  i.«s  a lifflp  PYPi+prI  qc  -d. 


THE  DAWN 


57 


his  finger  on  the  key;  sometimes  he  lifts  his  finger  after  he  \ 
has  the  key  half  pressed  down,  and  lays  it  on  another.  Ddes  he  \ 
know  what  will  come  out  of  it,  more  than  what  will  come  out 
of  the  other?  Suddenly  a sound  issues  from  it;  there  are  deep 
sounds  and  high  sounds,  some  tinkling,  some  roaring.  The 
child  listens  to  them  one  by  one  as  they  die  away  and  finally 
cease  to  be ; they  hover  in  the  air  like  bells  heard  far  off,  coming 
near  in  the  wind,  and  then  going  away  again;  then  when  you 
listen  you  hear  in  the  distance  other  voices,  different,  joining 
in  and  droning  like  flying  insects;  they  seem  to  call  to  you, 
to  draw  you  away  farther — farther  and  farther  into  the  mys- 
terious regions,  where  they  dive  down  and  are  lost.  . . . They 
are  gone!  ...  No;  still  they  murmur.  ...  A little  beating 
of  wings.  . . . How  strange  it  all  is!  They  are  like  spirits. 
How  is  it  that  they  are  so  obedient?  how  is  it  that  they  are 
held  captive  in  this  old  box?  But  best  of  all  is  when  you  lay 
two  Angers  on  two  keys  at  once.  Then  you  never  know  exactly 
what  will  happen.  Sometimes  the  two  spirits  are  hostile;  they 
are  angry  with  each  other,  and  flght;  and  hate  each  other,  and 
buzz  testily.  Then  voices  arc  raised;  they  cry  out,  angrily, 
now  sorrowfully.  J ean-Christophe  adores  that ; it  is  as  though 
there  were  monsters  chained  up,  biting  at  their  fetters,  beating 
against  the  bars  of  their  prison;  they  are  like  to  break  them, 
and  burst  out  like  the  monsters  in  the  fairy-book — the  genii 
imprisoned  in  the  Arab  bottles  under  the  seal  of  Solomon. 
Others  flatter  you;  they  try  to  cajole  you,  but  you  feel  that 
they  only  want  to  bite,  that  they  are  hot  and  fevered.  Jean- 
Christophe  does  not  know  what  they  want,  but  they  lure  him 
and  disturb  him;  they  make  him  almost  blush.  And  some- 
times there  are  notes  that  love  each  other ; sounds  embrace, 
as  people  do  with  their  arms  when  they  kiss : they  are  gracious 
and  sweet.  These  are  the  good  spirits;  their  faces  are  smiling, 
and  there  are  no  lines  in  them;  they  love  little  Jean-Chris- 
tophe,  and  little  Jean-Christophe  loves  them.  Tears  come  to 
his  eyes  as  he  hears  them,  and  he  is  never  weary  of  calling 
them  up.  They  are  his  friends,  his  dear,  tender  friends.  . . . 

So  the  child  journeys  through  the  forest  of  sounds,  and 
round  him  he  is  conscious  of  thousands  of  forces  lying  in  wait 
for  him,  and  calling  to  him  to  caress  or  devour  him.  . • . 


58 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


One  day  Melchior  came  upon  him  thus.  He  made  him  jump 
with  fear  at  the  sound  of  his  great  voice.  Jean-Christophe, 
thinking  he  was  doing  wrong,  quickly  put  his  hands  up  to  his 
ears  to  ward  off  the  blows  he  feared.  But  Melchior  did  not 
scold  him,  strange  to  say ; he  was  in  a good  temper,  and  laughed. 

^^You  like  that,  boy?^^  he  asked,  patting  his  head  kindly. 

Would  you  like  me  to  teach  you  to  play  it?^^ 

Would  he  like ! . . . Delighted,  he  murmured : Yes.’^  The 
two  of  them  sat  down  at  the  piano,  Jean-Christophe  perched 
this  time  on  a pile  of  big  books,  and  very  attentively  he  took 
his  first  lesson.  He  learned  first  of  all  that  the  buzzing  spirits 
have  strange  names,  like  Chinese  names,  of  one  syllable,  or 
even  of  one  letter.  He  was  astonished;  he  imagined  them  to 
be  different  from  that:  beautiful,  caressing  names,  like  the 
princesses  in  the  fairy  stories.  He  did  not  like  the  familiarity 
with  which  his  father  talked  of  them.  Again,  when  Melchior 
evoked  them  they  were  not  the  same;  they  seemed  to  become 
^indifferent  as  they  rolled  out  from  under  his  fingers.  But 
‘ Jean-Christophe  was  glad  to  learn  about  the  relationships  be- 
tween them,  their  hierarchy,  the  scales,  which  were  like  a 
King  commanding  an  army,  or  like  a band  of  negroes  marching 
in  single  file.  He  was  surprised  to  see  that  each  soldier,  or 
each  negro,  could  become  a monarch  in  his  turn,  or  the  head 
of  a similar  band,  and  that  it  was  possible  to  summon  whole 
battalions  from  one  end  to  the  other  of  the  keyboard.  It 
amused  him  to  hold  the  thread  which  made  them  march.  But 
it  was  a small  thing  compared  with  what  he  had  seen  at  first; 
his  enchanted  forest  was  lost.  However,  he  set  himself  to  learn, 
for  it  was  not  tiresome,  and  he  was  surprised  at  his  father’s 
patience.  Melchior  did  not  weary  of  it  either;  he  made  him 
begin  the  same  thing  over  again  ten  times.  Jean-Christophe 
did  not  understand  why  he  should  take  so  much  trouble;  his 
father  loved  him,  then?  That  was  good!  The  boy  worked 
^way;  his  heart  was  filled  with  gratitude. 

He  would  have  been  less  docile  had  he  known  what  thoughts 
were  springing  into  being  in  his  father’s  head. 

From  that  day  on  Melchior  took  him  to  the  house  of  a neigh- 
bor, where  three  times  a week  there  was  chamber  music.  Mel- 


THE  DAWN 


59 


chior  played  first  violin,  Jean  Michel  the  violoncello.  The 
other  two  were  a bank-clerk  and  the  old  watchmaker  of  the 
Schill6Tstr(isse.  Every  now  and  then  the  chemist  joined  them 
with  his  flute.  They  began  at  five,  and  went  on  till  nine.  Be- 
tween each  piece  they  drank  beer.  Neighbors  used  to  come  in 
and  out,  and  listen  without  a word,  leaning  against  the  wall, 
and  nodding  their  heads,  and  beating  time  with  their  feet, 
and  filling  the  room  with  clouds  of  tobacco-smoke.  Page  fol- 
lowed page,  piece  followed  piece,  but  the  patience  of  the  musi- 
cians was  never  exhausted.  They  did  not  speak;  they  were  all 
attention;  their  brows  were  knit,  and  from  time  to  time  they 
grunted  with  pleasure,  but  for  the  rest  they  were  perfectly 
incapable  not  only  of  expressing,  but  even  of  feeling,  the  beauty 
of  what  they  played.  They  played  neither  very  accurately  nor 
in  good  time,  but  they  never  went  off  the  rails,  and  followed 
faithfully  the  marked  changes  of  tone.  They  had  that  musical 
facility  which  is  easily  satisfied,  that  mediocre  perfection  which 
is  so  plentiful  in  the  race  which  is  said  to  be  the  most  musical 
in  the  world.  They  had  also  that  great  appetite  which  does 
not  stickle  for  the  quality  of  its  food,  so  only  there  be  quantity 
—that  healthy  appetite  to  which  all  music  is  good,  and  the 
more  substantial  the  better— it  sees  no  difference  between 
Brahms  and  Beethoven,  or  between  the  works  of  the  same 
master,  between  an  empty  concerto  and  a moving  sonata,  be- 
cause they  are  fashioned  of  the  same  stuff. 

Jean-Christophe  sat  apart  in  a corner,  which  was  his  own, 
behind  the  piano.  No  one  could  disturb  him  there,  for  to  reach 
it  he  had  to  go  on  all  fours.  It  was  half  dark  there,  and  the 
boy  had  just  room  to  lie  on  the  floor  if  he  huddled  up.  The 
smoke  of  the  tobacco  filled  his  eyes  and  throat : dust,  too ; there 
were  large  flakes  of  it  like  sheepskin,  but  he  did  not  mind  that, 
and  listened  gravely,  squatting  there  Turkish  fashion,  and 
widening  the  holes  in  the  cloth  of  the  piano  with  his  dirty  little 
fingers.  He  did  not  like  everything  that  they  played ; but  noth- 
ing that  they  played  bored  him,  and  he  never  tried  to  formulate 
his  opinions,  for  he  thought  himself  too  small  to  know  anything. 
Only  some  music  sent  him  to  sleep,  some  woke  him  up ; it 
was  never  disagreeable  to  him.  Without  his  knowing  it,  it 
ViTas  nearly  always  good  music  that  excited  him.  Sure  of  not 


60 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


(*■ 

/ 


being  seen,  he  made  faces,  he  wrinkled  his  nose,  ground  his 
teeth,  or  stuck  out  his  tongue;  his  eyes  flashed  with  anger  or 
drooped  languidly;  he  moved  his  arms  and  legs  with  a defiant 
and  valiant  air;  he  wanted  to  march,  to  lunge  out,  to  pulverize 
the  world.  He  fidgeted  so  much  that  in  the  end  a head  would 
peer  over  the  piano,  and  say : Hullo,  boy,  are  you  mad  ? 
Leave  the  piano.  . . . Take  your  hand  away,  or  Til  pull  your 
ears ! And  that  made  him  crestfallen  and  angry.  Why  did 
they  want  to  spoil  his  pleasure?  He  was  not  doing  any  harm. 
Must  he  always  be  tormented!  His  father  chimed  in.  They 
chid  him  for  making  a noise,  and  said  that  he  did  not  like 
music.  And  in  the  end  he  believed  it.  These  honest  citizens 
grinding  out  concertos  would  have  been  astonished  if  they  had  , 
been  told  that  the  only  person  in  the  company  who  really  felt 
the  music  was  the  little  boy.  1 

If  they  wanted  him  to  keep  quiet,  why  did  they  play  airs  ; 
which  make  you  march?  In  those  pages  were  rearing  horses, 
swords,  war-cries,  the  pride  of  triumph;  and  they  wanted  him,  ^ 
like  them,  to  do  no  more  than  wag  his  head  and  beat  time  with  | 
his  feet ! They  had  only  to  play  placid  dreams  or  some  of  those 
chattering  pages  which  talk  so  much  and  say  nothing.  There  ’ 
are  plenty  of  them,  for  example,  like  that  piece  of  Goldmark’s,  i 
of  which  the  old  watchmaker  had  just  said  with  a delighted  • 
smile : It  is  pretty.  There  is  no  harshness  in  it.  All  the  | 

corners  are  rounded  off.  . . The  boy  was  very  quiet  then,  i 
He  became  drowsy.  He  did  not  know  what  they  were  playing,  ^ 
hardly  heard  it;  but  he  was  happy;  his  limbs  were  numbed,  ] 


and  he  was  dreaming. 

His  dreams  were  not  a consecutive  story;  they  had  neither 
head  nor  tail.  It  was  rarely  that  he  saw  a definite  picture:  • 
his  mother  making  a cake,  and  with  a knife  removing  the  paste 
that  clung  to  her  fingers;  a water-rat  that  he  had  seen  the 
night  before  swimming  in  the  river;  a whip  that  he  wanted  . 
to  make  with  a willow  wand.  . . . Heaven  knows  why  these  ^ 
things  should  have  cropped  up  in  his  memory  at  such  a time!  ^ 
But  most  often  he  saw  nothing  at  all,  and  yet  he  felt  things  J 
innumerable  and  infinite.  It  was  as  though  there  were  a | 
number  of  very  important  things  not  to  be  spoken  of,  or 


THE  DAWN 


61 


because  they  had  always  been  so.  Some  of  them  were  sad, 
terribly  sad;  but  there  was  nothing  painful  in  them,  as  there 
is  in  the  things  that  belong  to  real  life ; they  were  not  ugly  and 
debasing,  like  the  blows  that  Jean-Christophe  had  from  his 
father,  or  like  the  things  that  were  in  his  head  when,  sick  at 
heart  with  shame,  he  thought  of  some  humiliation;  they  filled 
ihe  mind  with  a melancholy  calm.  And  some  were  bright  and 
shining,  shedding  torrents  of  joy.  And  Jean-Christophe 
thought:  ^^Yes,  it  is  thus — thus  that  I will  do  by-and-by.^^ 
He  did  not  know  exactly  what  thus  was,  nor  why  he  said  it,, 
but  he  felt  that  he  had  to  say  it,  and  that  it  was  clear  as  day. 
He  heard  the  sound  of  a sea,  and  he  was  quite  near  to  it,  kept 
from  it  only  by  a wall  of  dunes.  Jean-Christophe  had  no  idea 
what  sea  it  was,  or  what  it  wanted  with  him,  but  he  was  con- 
scious that  it  would  rise  above  the  barrier  of  dunes.  And 
then!  . . . Then  all  would  be  well,  and  he  would  be  quite 
happy.  Nothing  to  do  but  to  hear  it,  then,  quite  near,  to  sink 
to  sleep  to  the  sound  of  its  great  voice,  soothing  away  all  his 
little  griefs  and  humiliations.  They  were  sad  still,  but  no 
longer  shameful  nor  injurious;  everything  seemed  natural  and 
almost  sweet. 

Very  often  it  was  mediocre  music  that  produced  this  intoxica- 
tion in  him.  The  writers  of  it  were  poor  devils,  with  no  thought 
in  their  heads  but  the  gaining  of  money,  or  the  hiding  away 
of  the  emptiness  of  their  lives  by  tagging  notes  together  accord- 
ing to  accepted  formulae — or  to  be  original,  in  defiance  of 
formulae.  But  in  the  notes  of  music,  even  when  handled  by 
an  idiot,  there  is  such  a power  of  life  that  they  can  let  loose 
storms  in  a simple  soul.  Perhaps  even  the  dreams  suggested 
by  the  idiots  are  more  mysterious  and  more  free  than  those 
breathed  by  an  imperious  thought  which  drags  you  along  by 
force,  for  aimless  movement  and  empty  chatter  do  not  disturb 
the  mind  in  its  own  pondering.  . . . 

So,  forgotten  and  forgetting,  the  child  stayed  in  his  corner 
behind  the  piano,  until  suddenly  he  felt  ants  climbing  up  his 
legs.  And  he  remembered  then  that  he  was  a little  boy  with 
dirty  nails,  and  that  he  was  rubbing  his  nose  against  a white- 
washed wall,  and  holding  his  feet  in  his  hands. 

On  the  day  when  Melchior,  stealing  on  tiptoe,  had  surprised 


62 


JEAN-.CHEISTOPHE 


the  boy  at  the  keyboard  that  was  too  high  for  him,  he  had  stayed 
to  watch  him  for  a moment,  and  suddenly  there  had  flashed 
upon  him : A little  prodigy ! . . . Why  had  he  not  thought 
of  it?  . . . What  luck  for  the  family!  . . No  doubt  he 
had  thought  that  the  boy  would  be  a little  peasant  like  his 
mother.  It  would  cost  nothing  to  try.  What  a great  thing 
it  would  be!  He  would  take  him  all  over  Germany,  perhaps 
abroad.  It  would  be  a jolly  life,  and  noble  to  boot.^^  Melchior 
never  failed  to  look  for  the  nobility  hidden  in  all  he  did,  for 
it  was  not  often  that  he  failed  to  find  it,  after  some  reflection. 

Strong  in  this  assurance,  immediately  after  supper,  as  soon 
as  he  had  taken  his  last  mouthful,  he  dumped  the  child  once 
more  in  front  of  the  piano,  and  made  him  go  through  the  day’s  , 
lesson  until  his  eyes  closed  in  weariness.  Then  three  times 
the  next  day.  Then  the  day  after  that.  Then  every  day.  J ean-  " 
Christophe  soon  tired  of  it;  then  he  was  sick  to  death  of  it;  ; 
finally  he  could  stand  it  no  more,  and  tried  to  revolt  against 
it.  There  was  no  point  in  what  he  was  made  to  do:  nothing  ; 
but  learning  to  run  as  fast  as  possible  over  the  keys,  by  loosen-  | 
ing  the  thumb,  or  exercising  the  fourth  finger,  which  would 
cling  awkwardly  to  the  two  next  to  it.  It  got  on  his  nerves;  * 
there  was  nothing  beautiful  in  it.  There  was  an  end  of  the  t 
magic  sounds,  and  fascinating  monsters,  and  the  universe  of  • 
dreams  felt  in  one  moment.  . . . Nothing  but  scales  and  exer-  | 
cises — dry,  monotonous,  dull — duller  than  the  conversation  at  | 
meal-time,  which  was  always  the  same — always  about  the  dishes,  j 
and  always  the  same  dishes.  At  first  the  child  listened  absently  ] 
to  what  his  father  said.  When  he  was  severely  reprimanded  he 
went  on  with  a bad  grace.  He  paid  no  attention  to  abuse;  he 
met  it  with  bad  temper.  The  last  straw  was  when  one  evening 
he  heard  Melchior  unfold  his  plans  in  the  next  room.  So  it 
was  in  order  to  put  him  on  show  like  a trick  animal  that  he 
was  so  badgered  and  forced  every  day  to  move  bits  of  ivory ! 
He  was  not  even  given  time  to  go  and  see  his  beloved  river. 
What  was  it  made  them  so  set  against  him?  He  was  angry, 
hurt  in  his  pride,  robbed  of  his  liberty.  He  decided  that  he 
would  play  no  more,  or  as  badly  as  possible,  and  would  dis- 
courage his  father.  It  would  be  hard,  but  at  all  costs  he  must 


THE  DAWN 


63 


The  very  next  lesson  he  began  to  put  his  plan  into  execution. 
He  set  himself  conscientiously  to  hit  the  notes  awry,  or  to 
bungle  every  touch.  Melchior  cried  out,  then  roared,  and  blows 
began  to  rain.  He  had  a heavy  ruler.  At  every  false  note 
he  struck  the  boy’s  fingers,  and  at  the  same  time  shouted  in 
his  ears,  so  that  he  was  like  to  deafen  him.  Jean-Christophe’s 
face  twitched  under  the  pain  of  it;  he  bit  his  lips  to  keep 
himself  from  crying,  and  stoically  went  on  hitting  the  notes  all 
wrong,  bobbing  his  head  down  whenever  he  felt  a blow  coming. 
But  his  system  was  not  good,  and  it  was  not  long  before  he 
began  to  see  that  it  was  so.  Melchior  was  as  obstinate  as  his 
son,  and  he  swore  that  even  if  they  were  to  stay  there  two 
days  and  two  nights  he  would  not  let  him  off  a single  note  until 
it  had  been  properly  played.  Then  Jean-Christophe  tried  too 
deliberately  to  play  wrongly,  and  Melchior  began  to  suspect 
the  trick,  as  he  saw  that  the  boy’s  hand  fell  heavily  to  one  side 
at  every  note  with  obvious  intent.  The  blows  became  more 
frequent;  Jean-Christophe  was  no  longer  conscious  of  his  ‘fin- 
gers. He  wept  pitifully  and  silently,  sniffing,  and  swallowing 
down  his  sobs  and  tears.  He  understood  that  he  had  nothing 
to  gain  by  going  on  like  that,  and  that  he  would  have  to  resort 
to  desperate  measures.  He  stopped,  and,  trembling  at  the 
thought  of  the  storm  which  was  about  to  let  loose,  he  said 
valiantly : 

^^Papa,  I won’t  play  any  more.” 

Melchior  choked. 

^^What!  What!  ...”  he  cried. 

He  took  and  almost  broke  the  boy’s  arm  with  shaking  it. 
Jean-Christophe,  trembling  more  and  more,  and  raising  his 
elbow  to  ward  off  the  blows,  said  again : 

I won’t  play  any  more.  First,  because  I don’t  like  being 
beaten.  And  then  ...” 

He  could  not  finish.  A terrific  blow  knocked  the  wind  out 
of  him,  and  Melchior  roared: 

^^Ah!  you  don’t  like  being  beaten?  You  don’t  like 
it?  . . .” 

Blows  rained.  Jean-Christophe  bawled  through  his  sobs: 

And  then  ...  I don’t  like  music ! . . . I don’t  like 
music!  . . .” 


64 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


He  slipped  down  from  his  chair.  Melchior  roughly  put  him 
back,  and  knocked  his  knuckles ' against  the  keyboard.  He 
cried : 

You  shall  play! 

And  Jean-Christophe  shouted : 

^^No!  No!  I won’t  play!” 

Melchior  had  to  surrender.  He  thrashed  the  boy,  thrust  him 
from  the  room,  and  said  that  he  should  have  nothing  to  eat 
all  day,  or  the  whole  month,  until  he  had  played  all  his  exer- 
cises without  a mistake.  He  kicked  him  out  and  slammed  the 
door  after  him. 

Jean-Christophe  found  himself  on  the  stairs,  the  dark  and 
dirty  stairs,  worm-eaten.  A draught  came  through  a broken 
in  the  skylight,  and  the  walls  were  dripping.  Jean-Chris- 
tophe sat  on  one  of  the  greasy  steps;  his  heart  was  beating 
wildly  with  anger  and  emotion.  In  a low  voice  he  cursed  his 
father : 

Beast ! That’s  what  you  are ! 
ture  ...  a brute!  Yes,  a brute! 


you! 


Oh,  I wish  you  were 


A beast  ...  a gross  crea- 
. . and  I hate  you,  I hate 
dead ! I wish  you  were 


dead!” 

His  bosom  swelled.  He  looked  desperately  at  the  sticky 
staircase  and  the  spider’s  web  swinging  in  the  wind  above  the 
broken  pane.  He  felt  alone,  lost  in  his  misery.  He  looked 
at  the  gap  in  the  banisters.  . . . What  if  he  were  to  throw 
himself  down?  ...  or  out  of  the  window?  . . . Yes,  what  if 
he  were  to  kill  himself  to  punish  them?  How  remorseful  they 
would  be!  He  heard  the  noise  of  his  fall  from  the  stairs. 
The  door  upstairs  opened  suddenly.  Agonized  voices  cried : 

He  has  fallen ! — He  has  fallen ! ” Footsteps  clatter^ed  down- 
stairs. His  father  and  mother  threw  themselves  weeping  upon 
his  body.  His  mother  sobbed:  ^^It  is  your  fault!  You  have 
killed  him ! ” His  father  waved  his  arms,  threw  himself  on 
his  knees,  beat  his  head  against  the  banisters,  and  cried : What 
a wretch  am  I ! What  a wretch  am  I ! ” The  sight  of  all 
this  softened  his  misery.  He  was  on  the  point  of  taking  pity 
on  their  grief;  but  then  he  thought  that  it  was  well  for  them, 
and  he  enjoyed  his  revenge.  . . . 

When  his  story  was  ended,  he  found  himself  once  more  at 


THE  DAWN 


65 


the  top  of  the  stairs  in  the  dark;  he  looked  down  once  more, 
and  his  desire  to  throw  himself  down  was  gone.  He  even 
shuddered^  a little,  and  moved  away  from  the  edge,  thinking 
that  he  might  fall.  Then  he  felt  that  he  was  a prisoner,  like 
a poor  bird  in  a cage — a prisoner  forever,  with  nothing  to  do 
but  to  break  his  head  and  hurt  himself.  He  wept,  wept,  and 
he  rubbed  his  eyes  with  his  dirty  little  hands,  so  that  in  a 
moment  he  was  filthy.  As  he  wept  he  never  left  off  looking  at 
the  things  about  him,  and  he  found  some  distraction  in  that. 
He  stopped  moaning  for  a moment  to  look  at  the  spider  which 
had  just  begun  to  move.  Then  he  began  with  less  conviction. 
He  listened  to  the  sound  of  his  own  weeping,  and  went  on 
mechanically  with  his  sobbing,  without  much  knowing  why  he 
did  so.  Soon  he  got  up;  he  was  attracted  by  the  window.  He 
sat  on  the  window-sill,  retiring  into  the  background,  and 
watched  the  spider  furtively.  It  interested  while  it  revolted 
him. 

Below  the  Ehine  flowed,  washing  the  walls  of  the  house.  In 
the  staircase  window  it  was  like  being  suspended  over  the  river 
in  a moving  sky.  Jean-Christophe  never  limped  down  the 
stairs  without  taking  a long  look  at  it,  but  he  had  never  yet 
seen  it  as  it  was  to-day.  Grief  sharpens  the  senses;  it  is  as 
though  everything  were  more  sharply  graven  on  the  vision 
after  tears  have  washed  away  the  dim  traces  of  memory.  The 
river  was  like  a living  thing  to  the  child — a creature  inexplica- 
ble, but  how  much  more  powerful  than  all  the  creatures  that 
he  knew ! J ean-Christophe  leaned  forward  to  see  it  better ; he 
pressed  his  mouth  and  flattened  his  nose  against  the  pane. 
Where  was  it  going?  What  did  it  want?  It  looked  free,  and 
sure  of  its  road.  . . . Nothing  could  stop  it.  At  all  hours  of 
the  day  or  night,  rain  or  sun,  whether  there  were  joy  or  sorrow 
in  the  house,  it  went  on  going  by,  and  it  was  as  . though  nothing 
mattered  to  it,  as  though  it  never  knew  sorrow,  and  rejoiced 
in  its  strength.  What  joy  to  be  like  it,  to  run  through  the  fields, 
and  by  willow-branches,  and  over  little  shining  pebbles  and 
crisping  sand,  and  to  care  for  nothing,  to  be  cramped  by  noth- 
ing, to  be  free!  . . . 

The  boy  looked  and  listened  greedily;  it  was  as  though  he 
were  borne  along  by  the  river,  moving  by  with  it.  . . . When 


66 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


he  closed  his  eyes  he  saw  color — ^blue,  green,  yellow,  red,  and 
great  chasing  shadows  and  sunbeams.  . . , What  he  sees  takes 
shape.  Now  it  is  a large  plain,  reeds,  corn  waving  under  a 
breeze  scented  with  new  grass  and  mint.  Flowers  on  every  side 
— cornflowers,  poppies,  violets.  How  lovely  it  is!  How  sweet 
the  air ! How  good  it  is  to  lie  down  in  the  thick,  soft  grass ! 

. . . Jean-Christophe  feels  glad  and  a little  bewildered,  as  he 
does  when  on  feast-days  his  father  pours  into  his  glass  a little 
Ehine  wine.  . . . The  river  goes  by.  . . . The  country  is 
changed.  ...  Now  there  are  trees  leaning  over  the  water;  their 
delicate  leaves,  like  little  hands,  dip,  move,  and  turn  about  in 
the  water.  A village  among  the  trees  is  mirrored  in  the  river. 
There  are  cypress-trees,  and  the  crosses  of  the  cemetery  showing 
above  the  white  wall  washed  by  the  stream.  Then  thbre  are 
rocks,  a mountain  gorge,  vines  on  the  slopes,  a little  pine-wood,  ’ 
and  ruined  castles.  . . . And  once  more  the  plain,  corn,  birds,  ; 
and  the  sun.  ... 

The  great  green  mass  of  the  river  goes  by  smoothly,  like  a • 
single  thought;  there  are  no  waves,  almost  no  ripples — smooth,  ^ 
oily  patches.  Jean-Christophe  does  not  see  it;  he  has  closed 
his  eyes  to  hear  it  better.  The  ceaseless  roaring  fills  him,  makes 
him  giddy ; he  is  exalted  by  this  eternal,  masterful  dream  which 
goes  no  man  knows  whither.  Over  the  turmoil  of  its  depths  ^ 
rush  waters,  in  swift  rhythm,  eagerly,  ardently.  And  from  ' 
the  rhythm  ascends  music,  like  a vine  climbing  a trellis — j 
arpeggios  from  silver  keys,  sorrowful  violins,  velvety  and  , 
smooth-sounding  flutes.  . . . The  country  has  disappeared.  ' 
The  river  has  disappeared.  There  floats  by  only  a strange,  soft, 
and  twilight  atmosphere.  Jean-Christophe’s  heart  flutters  with 
emotion.  What  does  he  see  now  ? Oh ! Charming  faces ! . . . 

A little  girl  with  brown  tresses  calls  to  him,  slowly,  softly,  and 
mockingly.  ...  A pale  boy’s  face  looks  at  him  with  melancholy 
blue  eyes.  . . . Others  smile;  other  eyes  look  at  him — curious 
and  provoking  eyes,  and  their  glances  make  him  blush — eyes 
affectionate  and  mournful,  like  the  eyes  of  a dog — eyes  im- 
perious, eyes  suffering.  . . . And  the  pale  face  of  a woman, 
with  black  hair,  and  lips  close  pressed,  and  eyes  so  large  that 
they  obscure  her  other  features,  and  they  gaze  upon  Jean- 
Christophe  with  an  ardor  that  hurts  him.  . . . And,  dearest  of 


THE  DAWN 


67 


all,  that  face  which  smiles  upon  him  with  clear  gray  eyes  and 
lips  a little  open,  showing  gleaming  white  teeth.  ...  Ah! 
how  kind  and  tender  is  that  smile ! All  his  heart  is  tenderness 
from  it!  How  good  it  is  to  love!  Again!  Smile  upon  me 

again!  Do  not  go!  . . . Alas!  it  is  gone!  . . . But  it  leaves 

in  his  heart  sweetness  ineffable.  Evil,  sorrow,  are  no  more; 
nothing  is  left.  . . . Nothing,  only  an  airy  dream,  like  serene 
music,  floating  down  a sunbeam,  like  the  gossamers  on  fine 
summer  days.  . . . What  has  happened?  What  are  these 
visions  that  fill  the  child  with  sadness  and  sweet  sorrow?  Never 
had  he  seen  them  before,  and  yet  he  knew  them  and  recognized 
them.  Whence  come  they?  From  what  obscure  abysm  of 

creation?  Are  they  wWt  has  been  ...  or  what  will 

ie?  . . . 

Now  all  is  done,  every  haunting  form  is  gone.  Once  more 
through  a misty  veil,  as  though  he  were  soaring  high  above 
it,  the  river  in  flood  appears,  covering  the  fields,  and  rolling 
by,  majestic,  slow,  almost  still.  And  far,  far  away,  like  a:  steely  ^ 
light  upon  the  horizon,  a watery  plain,  a line  of  trembling  waves 
— the  sea.  The  river  runs  down  to  it.  The  sea  seems  to  run 
up  to  the  river.  She  fires  him.  He  desires  her.  He  must  lose 
himself  in  her.  . . . The  music  hovers;  lovely  dance  rhythms 
swing  out  madly;  all  the  world  is  rocked  in  their  triumphant 
whirligig.  . . . The  soul,  set  free,  cleaves  space,  like  swallows’ 
flight,  like  swallows  drunk  with  the  air,  skimming  across  the 
sky  with  shrill  cries.  . . . Joy!  Joy!  There  is  nothing,  noth- 
ing ! . . . Oh,  infinite  happiness ! . . . 

Hours  passed;  it  was  evening;  the  staircase  was  in  darkness. 
Drops  of  rain  made  rings  upon  the  river’s  gown,  and  the  current 
bore  them  dancing  away.  Sometimes  the  branch  of  a tree  or 
pieces  of  black  bark  passed  noiselessly  and  disappeared.  The 
murderous  spider  had  withdrawn  to  her  darkest  corner.  And 
little  Jean-Christophe  was  still  leaning  forward  on  the  window- 
sill. His  face  was  pale  and  dirty;  happiness  shone  in  him. 

He  was  asleep. 


68 


JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 


III  - 

E la  faccia  del  sol  nascere  ombrata. 

Purgatorio,  xxx. 

' He  had  to  surrender.  In  spite  of  an  obstinate  and  heroic 
y resistance,  blows  triumphed  over  his  ill-will.  Every  morning 
for  three  hours,  and  for  three  hours  every  evening,  Jean-Chris- 
tophe  was  set  before  the  instrument  of  torture.  All  on  edge 
with  attention  and  weariness,  with  large  tears  rolling  down 
his  cheeks  and  nose,  he  moved  his  little  red  hands  over  the 
black  and  white  keys — ^his  hands  were  often  stiff  with  cold — 
under  the  threatening  ruler,  which  descended  at  every  false 
note,  and  the  harangues  of  his  master,  which  were  more  odious  " 

to  him  than  the  blows.  He  thought  that  he  hated  music.  And  ; 

yet  he  applied  himself  to  it  with  a zest  which  fear  of  .Melchior 
did  not  altogether  explain.  Certain  words  of  his  grandfather  t 

had  made  an  impression  on  him.  The  old  man,  seeing  his  | 

grandson  weeping,  had  told  him,  with  that  gravity  which  he  | 

always  maintained  for  the  boy,  that  it  was  worth  while  suffer-  \ 

ing  a little  for  the  most  beautiful  and  noble  art  given  to  men  | 

for  their  consolation  and  glory.  And  Jean-Christophe,  who  i 

was  grateful  to  his  grandfather  for  talking  to  him  like  a man,  | 

had  been  secretly  touched  by  these  simple  words,  which  sorted  | 

well  with  his  childish  stoicism  and  growing  pride.  But,  more  ^ 

. than  by  argument,  he  was  bound  and  enslaved  by  the  memory  1 

of  certain  musical  emotions,  bound  and  enslaved  to  the  detested  i 

art,  against  which  he  tried  in  vain  to  rebel.  | 

There  was  in  the  town,  as  usual  in  Germany,  a theater,  where  7 
opera,  opera-comique,  operetta,  drama,  comedy,  and  vaudeville 
are  presented — every  sort  of  play  of  every  style  and  fashion, 
There  were  performances  three  times  a week  from  six  to  nine  in  ^ 
the  evening.  Old  Jean  Michel  never  missed  one,  and  was  equally  ; 
interested  in  everything.  Once  he  took  his  grandson  with  him.  r ; 
Several  days  beforehand  he  told  him  at  length  what  the  piece 
was  about.  Jean-Christophe  did  not  understand  it,  but  he  did  J 
gather  that  there  would  be  terrible  things  in  it,  and  while  he  j 
was  consumed  with  the  desire  to  see  them  he.  was  much  afraid,  ! 


THE  DAWN 


69 


though  he  dared  not  confess  it.  He  knew  that  there  was  to 
be  a storm,  and  he  was  fearful  of  being  struck  by  lightning. 
He  knew  that  there  was  to  be  a battle,  and  he  was  not  at  all 
sure  that  he  would  not  be  killed.  On  the  night  before,  in 
bed,  he  went  through  real  agony,  and  on  the  day  of  the  per- 
formance he  almost  wished  that  his  grandfather  might  be 
prevented  from  coming  for  him.  But  when  the  hour  was  near, 
and  his  grandfather  did  not  come,  he  began  to  worry,  and 
every  other  minute  looked  out  of  the  window.  At  last  the 
old  man  appeared,  and  they  set  out  together.  His  heart  leaped 
in  his  bosom;  his  tongue  was  dry,  and  he  could  not  speak. 

They  arrived  at  the  mysterious  building  which  was  so  often 
talked  about  at  home.  At  the  door  Jean  Michel  met  some 
acquaintances,  and  the  boy,  who  was  holding  his  hand  tight 
because  he  was  afraid  of  being  lost,  could  not  understand  how 
they  could  talk  and  laugh  quietly  at  such  a moment. 

Jean  Michel  took  his  usual  place  in  the.  first  row  behind  the 
orchestra.  He  leaned  on  the  fialustrad^e,  and  began  a long 
conversation  with  the  contra-bass.  He  was  at  home  there; 
there  he  was  listened  to  because  of  his  authority  as  a musician, 
and  he  made  the  most  of  it;  it  might  almost  be  said  that  he 
abused  it.  Jean-Christophe  could  hear  nothing.  He  was  over- 
whelmed by  his  expectation  of  the  play,  by  the  appearance  of 
the  theater,  which  seemed  magnificent  to  him,  by  the  splendor 
of  the  audience,  who  frightened  him  terribly.  He  dared  not 
turn  his  head,  for  he  thought  that  all  eyes  were  fixed  on  him. 
He  hugged  his  little  cap  between  his  knees,  and  he  stared  at 
the  magic  curtain  with  round  eyes. 

At  last  three  blows  were  struck.  His  grandfather  blew  his 
nose,  and  drew  the  libretto  from  his  pocket.  He  always  fol- 
lowed it  scrupulously,  so  much  so  that  sometimes  he  neglected 
what  was  happening  on  the  stage.  The  orchestra  began  to 
play.  With  the  opening  chords  Jean-Christophe  felt  more  at 
ease.  He  was  at  home  in  this  world  of  sound,  and  from  that 
moment,  however  extravagant  the  play  might  be,  it  seemed  nat- 
ural to  him. 

The  curtain  was  raised,  to  reveal  pasteboard  trees  and  crea- 
tures who  were  not  much  more  real.  The  boy  looked  at  it  all, 
gaping  with  admiration,  but  he  was  not  surprised.  The  piece 


70 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


was  set  in  a fantastic  East,  of  which  he  could  have  had  no 
idea.  The  poem  was  a web  of  ineptitudes,  in  which  no  human 
quality  was  perceptible.  Jean-Christophe  hardly  grasped  it  at 
all;  he  made  extraordinary  mistakes,  took  one  character  for 
another,  and  pulled  at  his  grandfather’s  sleeve  to  ask  him  absurd 
questions,  which  showed  that  he  had  understood  nothing.  He 
was  not  bored : passionately  interested,  on  the  contrary.  Eound 
the  idiotic  libretto  he  built  a romance  of  his  own  invention, 
which  had  no  sort  of  relation  to  the  one  that  was  represented 
on  the  stage.  Every  moment  some  incident  upset  his  romance, 
and  he  had  to  repair  it,  but  that  did  not  worry  him.  He  had 
made  his  choice  of  the  people  who  moved  upon  the  stage,  mak- 
ing all  sorts  of  different  sounds,  and  breathlessly  he  followed 
the  fate  of  those  upon  whom  he  had  fastened  his  sympathy. 
He  was  especially  concerned  with  a fair  lady,  of  uncertain  age, 
who  had  long,  brilliantly  fair  hair,  eyes  of  an  unnatural  size, 
and  bare  feet.  The  monstrous  improbabilities  of  the  setting 
did  not  shock  him.  His  keen,  childish  eyes  did  not  perceive 
the  grotesque  ugliness  of  the  actors,  large  and  fleshy,  and  the 
deformed  chorus  of  all  sizes  in  two  lines,  nor  the  pointlessness 
of  their  gestures,  nor  their  faces  bloated  by  their  shrieks,  nor 
the  full  wigs,  nor  the  high  heels  of  the  tenor,  nor  the  make-up 
of  his  lady-love,  whose  face  was  streaked  with  variegated  pen- 
ciling. He  was  in  the  condition  of  a lover,  whose  passion  blinds 
him  to  the  actual  aspect  of  the  beloved  object.  The  marvelous 
power  of  illusion,  natural  to  children,  stopped  all  unpleasant 
sensations  on  the  way,  and  transformed  them. 

The  music  especially  worked  wonders.  It  bathed  the  whole 
scene  in  a misty  atmosphere,  in  which  everything  became  beau- 
tiful, noble,  and  desirable.  It  bred  in  the  soul  a desperate 
need  of  love,  and  at  the  same  time  showed  phantoms  of  love 
on  all  sides,  to  fill  the  void  that  itself  had  created.  Little 
Jean-Christophe  was  overwhelmed  by  his  emotion.  There  were 
words,  gestures,  musical  phrases  which  disturbed  him;  he  dared 
not  then  raise  his  eyes;  he  knew  not  whether  it  were  well 
or  ill;  he  blushed  and  grew  pale  by  turns;  sometimes  there 
came  drops  of  sweat  upon  his  brow,  and  he  was  fearful  lest 
all  the  people  there  should  see  his  distress.  When  the  catas- 
trophe came  about  which  inevitably  breaks  upon  lovers  in  the 


THE  DAWH 


71 


fourth  act  of  an  opera  so  as  to  provide  the  tenor  and  the  prima 
donna  with  an  opportunity  for  showing  off  their  shrillest 
screams,  the  child  thought  he  must  choke  5 his  throat  hurt  him 
as  though  he  had  caught  cold;  he  clutched  at  his  neck  with 
his  hands,  and  could  not  swallow  his  saliva;  tears  welled  up 
in  him;  his  hands  and  feet  were  frozen.  Fortunately,  his 
grandfather  was  not  much  less  moved.  He  enjoyed  the  theater 
with  a childish  simplicity.  During  the  dramatic  passages  he 
coughed  carelessly  to  hide  his  distress,  but  Jean-Christophe  saw 
it,  and  it  delighted  him.  It  was  horribly  hot;  Jean-Christophe 
was  dropping  with  sleep,  and  he  was  very  uncomfortable.  But 
he  thought  only ; “ Is  there  much  longer  ? It  cannot  be  fin- 
ished ! ” Then  suddenly  it  was  finished,  without  his  knowing 
why.  The  curtain  fell ; the  audience  rose ; the  enchantment  was 
broken. 

They  went  home  through  the  night,  the  two  children — the 
old  man  and  the  little  boy.  What  a fine  night ! What  a serene 
moonlight!  They  said  nothing;  they  were  turning  over  their 
memories.  At  last  the  old  man  said : 

“ Did  you  like  it,  boy  ? ” 

Jean-Christophe  could  not  reply;  he  was  still  fearful  from 
emotion,  and  he  would  not  speak,  so  as  not  to  break  the  spell; 
he  had  to  make  an  effort  to  whisper,  with  a sigh: 

“Oh  yes.” 

The  old  man  smiled.  After  a time  he  went  on: 

“ It’s  a fine  thing — a musician’s  trade ! To  create  things  like 
that,  such  marvelous  spectacles — is  there  anything  more  glori- 
ous ? It  is  to  be  God  on  earth  I ” 

The  boy’s  mind  leaped  to  that.  What!  a man  had  made  all 
that!  That  had  not  occurred  to  him.  It  had  seemed  that  it' 
must  have  made  itself,  must  be  the  work  of  Nature.  A man, 
a musician,  such  as  he  would  be  some  day ! Oh,  to  be  that 
for  one  day,  only  one  day!  And  then  afterwards  . . . after- 
wards, whatever  you  like!  Die,  if  necessary!  He  asked: 

“What  man  made  that,  grandfather?” 

The  old  man  told  him  of  Frangois  Marie  Hassler,  a 
young  German  artist  who  lived  at  Berlin.  He  had  known 
him  once.  Jean-Christophe  listened,  all  ears.  Suddenly  he 
said: 


JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 


72 

"And  you,  grandfather?” 

. j|  The  old  man  trembled. 

"What?”  he  asked. 

I 

! i ^^Did  you  do  things  like  that — ^you  too?^’ 

i : Certainly/^  said  the  old  man  a little  crossly. 

He  was  silent,  and  after  they  had  walked  a little  he 
I : sighed  heavily.  It  was  one  of  the  sorrows  of  his  life.  He 

had  always  longed  to  write  for  the  theater,  and  inspira- 
'ii  tion  had  always  betrayed  him.  He  had  in  his  desk  one 
or  two  acts  written,  but  he  had  so  little  illusion  as  to  their 
worth  that  he  had  never  dared  to  submit  them  to  an  outside 
judgment. 

They  said  no  more  until  they  reached  home.  either  slept. 

The  old  man  was  troubled.  He  took  his  Bible  for  consolation. 

In  bed  Jean-Christophe  turned  over  and  over  the  events  of  the 
evening;  he  recollected  the  smallest  details,  and  the  girl  with 
the  bare  feet  reappeared  before  him.  As  he  dozed  off  a musical 
, f phrase  rang  in  his  ears  as  distinctly  as  if  the  orchestra  were  t 
there.  All  his  body  leaped;  he  sat  up  on  his  pillow,  his  head  ^ 

buzzing  with  music,  and  he  thought:  Some  day  I also  shall  ; 

write.  Oh,  can  I ever  do  it?^^  ; 

i From  that  moment  he  had  only  one  desire,  to  go  to  the  ^ 

, theater  again,  and  he  set  himself  to  work  more  keenly,  because  I 
they  made  a visit  to  the  theater  his  reward.  He  thought  of  { 

nothing  but  that;  half  the  week  he  thought  of  the  last  per-  \ 

formance,  and  the  other  half  he  thought  of  the  next.  He  was  ] 

fearful  of  being  ill  on  a theater  day,  and  this  fear  made  him  1 

often  find  in  himself  the  symptoms  of  three  or  four  illnesses,  y 

When  the  day  came  he  did  not  eat;  he  fidgeted  like  a soul  in 
agony;  he  looked  at  the  clock  fifty  times,  and  thought  that 
the  evening  would  never  come;  finally,  unable  to  contain  him-  j 
self,  he  would  go  out  an  hour  before  the  office  opened,  for  fear 
of  not  being  able  to  procure  a seat,  and,  as  he  was  the  first 
in  the  empty  theater,  he  used  to  grow  uneasy.  His  grandfather 
had  told  him  that  once  or  twice  the  audience  had  not  been 
large  enough,  and  so  the  players  had  preferred  not  to  perform, 
and  to  give  back  the  money.  He  watched  the  arrivals  and 
counted  them,  thinking : Twenty-three,  twenty-four,  twenty- 
five.  . . . Oh,  it  is  not  enough  . . . there  will  never  be 


THE  DAWN 


73 


enough ! And  when  he  saw  some  important  person  enter 
the  circle  or  the  stall^  his  heart  was  lighter,  and  he  said  to 
himself:  ''They  will  never  dare  to  send  him  away.  Surely 
they  will  play  for  him.’’  But  he  was  not  convinced;  he  would 
not  be  reassured  until  the  musicians  took  their  places.  And 
even  then  he  would  be  afraid  that  the  curtain  would  rise,  and 
they  would  announce,  as  they  had  done  one  evening,  a change 
of  programme.  With  lynx  eyes  he  watched  the  stand  of  the 
contra-bass  to  see  if  the  title  written  on  his  music  was  that  of 
the  piece  announced.  And  when  he  had  seen  it  there,  two 
minutes  later  he  would  look  again  to  make  quite  sure  that  he 
had  not  been  wrong.  The  conductor  was  not  there.  He  must 
be  ill.  There  was  a stirring  behind  the  curtain,  and  a sound 
of  voices  and  hurried  footsteps.  Was  there  an  accident,  some 
untoward  misfortune?  Silence  again.  The  conductor  was  at 
his  post.  Everything  seemed  ready  at  last.  . . . They  did  not 
begin ! What  was  happening  ? He  boiled  over  with  impatience. 
Then  the  bell  rang.  His  heart  thumped  away.  The  orchestra 
began  the  overture,  and  for  a few  hours  Jean-Christophe  would 
swim  in  happiness,  troubled  only  by  the  idea  that  it  must  soon 
come  to  an  end. 

Some  time  after  that  a musical  event  brought  even  more 
excitement  into  Jean-Christophe’s  thoughts.  Frangois  Marie 
Hassler,  the  author  of  the  first  opera  which  had  so  bowled  him 
over,  was  to  visit  the  town.  He  was  to  conduct  a concert  con- 
sisting of  his  compositions.  The  town  was  excited.  The  young 
musician  was  the  subject  of  violent  discussion  in  Germany, 
and  for  a fortnight  he  was  the  only  topic  of  conversation.  It 
was  a different  matter  when  he  arrived.  The  friends  of  Mel- 
chior and  old  Jean  Michel  continually  came  for  news,  and 
they  went  away  with  the  most  extravagant  notions  of  the  musi- 
cian’s habits  and  eccentricities.  The  child  followed  these  narra- 
tives with  eager  attention.  The  idea  that  the  great  man  was 
there  in  the  town,  breathing  the  same  air  as  himself,  treading 
the  same  stones,  threw  him  into  a state  of  dumb  exaltation. 
He  lived  only  in  the  hope  of  seeing  him. 

Hassler  was  staying  at  the  Palace  as  the  guest  of  the  Grand 
Duke.  He  hardly  went  out,  except  to  the  theater  for  rehearsals. 


i V 

I 

, !■ 


to  -which  Jean-Christophe  w^as  not  admitted,  and  as  he  was  very 
lazy,  he  went  to  and  fro  in  the  Prince’s  carriage.  Therefore, 
Jean-Christophe  did  not  have  many  opportunities  of  seeing  him, 
and  he  only  succeeded  once  in  catching  sight  of  him  as  he 
drove  in  the  carriage.  He  saw  his  fur  coat,  and  wasted  hours 
in  waiting  in  the  street,  thrusting  and  jostling  his  way  to 
right  and  left,  and  before  and  behind,  to  win  and  keep  his  place 
in  front  of  the  loungers.  He  consoled  himself  with  spending 
half  his  days  watching  the  windows  of  the  Palace  which  had 
been  pointed  out  as  those  of  the  master.  Most  often  he  only 
saw  the  shutters,  for  Hassler  got  up  late,  and  the  windows  were 
closed  almost  all  morning.  This  habit  had  made  well-informed 
persons  say  that  Hassler  could  not  bear  the  light  of  day,  and 
lived  in  eternal  night. 

At  length  Jean-Christophe  was  able  to  approach  his  hero. 

It  was  the  day  of  the  concert.  All  the  town  was  there.  The  ; 
Grand  Duke  and  his  Court  occupied  the  great  royal  box,  sur- 
mounted with  a crown  supported  by  two  chubby  cherubims.  ’ 
The  theater  was  in  gala  array.  The  stage  was  decorated  with  | 
branches  of  oak  and  flowering  laurel.  All  the  musicians  of  ^ 
any  account  made  it  a point  of  honor  to  take  their  places  in  - 
the  orchestra.  Melchior  was  at  his  post,  and  Jean  Michel  was  '! 
conducting  the  chorus.  i 

When  Hassler  appeared  there  was  loud  applause  from  every  ^ 
part  of  the  house,  and  the  ladies  rose  to  see  him  better.  Jean-  | 
Christophe  devoured  him  with  his  eyes.  Hassler  had  a young,  < 
sensitive  face,  though  it  was  already  rather  puffy  and  tired-  ^ 
looking;  his  temples  were  bald,  and  his  hair  was  thin  on  the  ‘ 
crown  of  his  head ; for  the  rest,  fair,  curly  hair.  His  blue  eyes 
looked  vague.  He  had  a little  fair  mustache  and  an  expressive 
mouth,  which  was  rarely  still,  but  twitched  with  a thousand  im- 
perceptible movements.  He  was  tall,  and  held  himself  badly — 
not  from  awkwardness,  but  from  weariness  or  boredom.  He 


conducted  capriciously  and  lithely,  with  his  whole  awkward 
body  swaying,  like  his  music,  with  gestures,  now  caressing,  now 
sharp  and  jerky.  It  was  easy  to  see  that  he  was  very  nervous, 
and  his  music  was  the  exact  reflection  of  himself.  The  quiver- 
ing and  jerky  life  of  it  broke  through  the  usual  apathy  of  the 
orchestra.  Jean-Christophe  breathed  heavily;  in  spite  of  his 


THE  DAWN 


fear  of  drawing  attention  to  himself,  he  could  not  stand  still 
in  his  place;  he  fidgeted,  got  up,  and  the  music  gave  him  such 
violent  and  unexpected  shocks  that  he  had  to  move  his  head, 
arms,  and  legs,  to  the  great  discomfort  of  his  neighbors,  who 
warded  off  his  kicks  as  best  they  could.  The  whole  audience 
was  enthusiastic,  fascinated  by  the  success,  rather  than  by  the 
compositions.  At  the  end  there  was  a storm  of  applause  and 
cries,  in  which  the  trumpets  in  the  orchestra  joined,  German 
fashion,  with  their  triumphant  blare  in  salute  of  the  conqueror. 
Jean-Christophe  trembled  with  pride,  as  though  these  honors 
were  for  himself.  He  enjoyed  seeing  Hassler’s  face  light  up 
with  childish  pleasure.  The  ladies  threw  fiowers,  the  men 
waved  their  hats,  and  the  audience  rushed  for  the  platform. 
Every  one  wanted  to  shake  the  master’s  hand.  Jean-Christophe 
saw  one  enthusiast  raise  the  master’s  hand  to  his  lips,  another 
steal  a handkerchief  that  Hassler  had  left  on  the  corner  of  his 
desk.  He  wanted  to  reach  the  platform  also,  although  he  did 
not  know  why,  for  if  at  that  moment  he  had  found  himself 
near  Hassler,  he  would  have  fied  at  once  in  terror  and  emotion. 
But  he  butted  with  all  his  force,  like  a ram,  among  the  skirts 
and  legs  that  divided  him  from  Hassler.  He  was  too  small; 
he  could  not  break  through. 

Fortunately,  when  the  concert  was  over,  his  grandfather  came 
and  took  him  to  join  in  a party  to  serenade  Hassler.  It  was 
night,  and  torches  were  lighted^  All  the  musicians  of  the 
orchestra  were  there.  They  talked  only  of  the  marvelous  com- 
positions they  had  heard.  They  arrived  outside  the  Palace, 
and  took  up  their  places  without  a sound  under  the  master’s 
windows.  They  took  on  an  air  of  secrecy,  although  everybody, 
including  Hassler,  knew  what  was  to  come.  In  the  silence  of 
the  night  they  began  to  play  certain  famous  fragments  of 
Hassler’s  compositions.  He  appeared  at  the  window  with  the 
Prince,  and  they  roared  in  their  honor.  Both  bowed.  A serv- 
ant came  from  the  Prince  to  invite  the  musicians  to  enter  the 
Palace.  They  passed  through  great  rooms,  with  frescoes  repre- 
senting naked  men  with  helmets;  they  were  of  a reddish  color, 
and  were  making  gestures  of  defiance.  The  sky  was  covered  with 
great  clouds  like  sponges.  There  were  also  men  and  women  of 
marble  clad  in  waist-cloths  made  of  iron.  The  guests  walked  on 


6 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


carpets  so  thick  that  their  tread  was  inaudible,  and  they  came 
at  length  to  a room  which  was  as  light  as  day,  and  there  were 
tables  laden  with  drinks  and  good  things. 

The  Grand  Duke  was  there,  but  Jean-Christophe  did  not  see 
him;  he  had  eyes  only  for  Hassler.  Hassler  came  towards 
them ; he  thanked  them.  He  picked  his  words  carefully,  stopped 
awkwardly  in  the  middle  of  a sentence,  and  extricated  himself 
with  a quip  which  made  everybody  laugh.  They  began  to  eat. 
Hassler  took  four  or  five  musicians  aside.  He  singled  out 
Jean-Christophe’s  grandfather,  and  addressed  very  flattering 
words  to  him:  he  recollected  that  Jean  Michel  had  been  one 
of  the  first  to  perform  his  works,  and  he  said  that  he  had  often 
heard  tell  of  his  excellence  from  a friend  of  his  who  had  been 
a pupil  of  the  old  man’s.  Jean-Christophe’s  grandfather  ex- 
pressed his  gratitude  profusely;  he  replied  with  such  extraor- 
dinary eulogy  that,  in  spite  of  his  adoration  of  Hassler,  the  = 
boy  was  ashamed.  But  to  Hassler  they  seemed  to  be  pleasant  * 
and  in  the  rational  order.  Finally,  the  old  man,  who  had  , 
lost  himself  in  his  rigmarole,  took  Jean-Christophe  by  the  hand,  ' 
and  presented  him  to  Hassler.  Hassler  smiled  at  Jean-Chris-  * 
tophe,  and  carelessly  patted  his  head,  and  when  he  learned  that  ^ 
the  boy  liked  his  music,  and  had  not  slept  for  several  nights 
in  anticipation  of  seeing  him,  he  took  him  in  his  arms  and  i 
*lied  him  with  questions.  Jean-Christophe,  struck  dumb  and  { 
flushing  with  pleasure,  dared  not  look  at  him.  Hassler  took  | 
him  by  the  chin  and  lifted  his  face  up.  Jean-Christophe  ven- 
tured to  look.  HassleFs  eyes  were  kind  and  smiling;  he  began  • 
to  smile  too.  Then  he  felt  so  happy,  so  wonderfully  happy  in  ' 
the  great  man’s  arms,  that  he  burst  into  tears.  Hassler  was 
touched  by  this  simple  affection,  and  was  more  kind  than  ever. 

He  kissed  the  boy  and  talked  to  him  tenderly.  At  the  same 
time  he  said  funny  things  and  tickled  him  to  make  him  laugh; 
and  Jean-Christophe  could  not  help  laughing  through  his  tears. 
Soon  he  became  at  ease,  and  answered  Hassler  readily,  and  of 
his  own  accord  he  began  to  whisper  in  his  ear  all  his  small 
ambitions,  as  though  he  and  Hassler  were  old  friends;  he  told 
him  how  he  wanted  to  be  a musician  like  Hassler,  and,  like 
Hassler,  to  make  beautiful  things,  and  to  be  a great  man.  He, 
who  was  always  ashamed,  talked  confidently;  he  did  not  know 


THE  DAWH 


77 


•what  he  was  saying ; he  was  in  a sort  of  ecstasy.  Hassler  smiled 
at  his  prattling  and  said: 

“When  you  are  a man,  and  have  become  a good  musician, 
you  shall  come  and  see  me  in  Berlin.  I shall  make  something 
of  you.” 

Jean-Christophe  was  too  delighted  to  reply. 

Hassler  teased  him. 

“You  don’t  want  to?” 

Jean-Christophe  nodded  his  head  violently  five  or  six  times, 
meaning  “Yes.” 

“ It  is  a bargain,  then  ? ” 

Jean-Christophe  nodded  again. 

“ Kiss  me,  then.” 

Jean-Christophe  threw  his  arms  round  Hassler’s  neck  and 
hugged  him  with  all  his  strength. 

“ Oh,  you  are  wetting  me ! Let  go ! Your  nose  wants 
wiping ! ” 

Hassler  laughed,  and  wiped  the  boy’s  nose  himself,  a little 
self-consciously,  though  he  was  quite  Jolly.  He  put  him  down, 
then  took  him  by  the  hand  and  led  him  to  a table,  where  he 
filled  his  pockets  with  cake,  and  left  him,  saying: 

“ Good-bye ! Eemember  your  promise.” 

Jean-Christophe  swam  in  happiness.  The  rest  of  the  world 
had  ceased  to  exist  for  him.  He  could  remember  nothing  of 
what  had  happened  earlier  in  the  evening ; he  followed  lovingly 
Hassler^s  every  expression  and  gesture.  One  thing  that  he  said 
struck  him.  Hassler  was  holding  a glass  in  his  hand ; he  was 
talking,  and  his  face  suddenly  hardened,  and  he  said : 

The  joy  of  such  a day  must  not  make  us  forget  our  enemies. 
We  must  never  forget  our  enemies.  It  is  not  their  fault  that 
we  are  not  crushed  out  of  existence.  It  will  not  be  our  fault 
if  that  does  not  happen  to  them.  That  is  why  the  toast  I 
propose  is  that  there  are  people  whose  health  ...  we  will  not 
drink ! 

Everybody  applauded  and  laughed  at  this  original  toast. 
Hassler  had  laughed  with  the  others  and  his  good-humored 
expression  had  returned.  But  Jean-Christophe  was  put  out 
by  it.  Although  he  did  not  permit  himself  to  criticise  any 
action  of  his  hero,  it  hurt  him  that  he  had  thought  ugly  things. 


78 


JEAN’-CHEISTOPHE 


when  on  such  a night  there  ought  to  be  nothing  but  brilliant 
thoughts  and  fancies.  But  he  did  not  examine  what  he  felt, 
and  the  impression  that  it  made  was  soon  driven  out  by  his 
great  joy  and  the  drop  of  champagne  which  he  drank  out  of 
his  grandfather^s  glass. 

On  the  way  back  the  old  man  never  stopped  talking;  he  was 
delighted  with  the  praise  that  Hassler  had  given  him ; he  cried 
out  that  Hassler  was  a genius  such  as  had  not  been  known 
for  a century.  Jean-Christophe  said  nothing,  locking  up  in 
his  heart  his  intoxication  of  love.  He  had  kissed  him.  He 
had  held  him  in  his  arms!  How  good  he  was!  How  great! 

Ah,^^  he  thought  in  bed,  as  he  kissed  his  pillow  passionately, 

I would  die  for  him — die  for  him  ! 

The  brilliant  meteor  which  had  flashed  across  the  sky  of  the 
little  town  that  night  had  a decisive  influence  on  Jean-Chris-  " 
tophe^s  mind.  All  his  childhood  Hassler  was  the  model  on  ^ 
which  his  eyes  were  flxed,  and  to  follow  his  example  the  little  ‘ 
man  of  six  decided  that  he  also  would  write  music.  To  tell  ^ 
the  truth,  he  had  been  doing  so  for  long  enough  without  know-  * 
ing  it,  and  he  had  not  waited  to  be  conscious  of  composing  ■ 
before  he  composed. 

Everything  is  music  for  the  born  musician.  Everything  that  ; 
throbs,  or  moves,  or  stirs,  or  palpitates — sunlit  summer  days,  ; 
nights  when  the  wind  howls,  flickering  light,  the  twinkling  of  \ 
the  stars,  storms,  the  song  of  birds,  the  buzzing  of  insects,  the  | 
murmuring  of  trees,  voices,  loved  or  loathed,  familiar  fireside 
sounds,  a creaking  door,  blood  moving  in  the  veins  in  the  silence  | 
of  the  night — everything  that  is  is  music;  all  that  is  needed  » 
is  that  it  should  be  heard.  All  the  music  of  creation  found 
its  echo  in  Jean-Christophe.  Everything  that  he  saw,  every- 
thing that  he  felt,  was  translated  into  music  without  his  being 
conscious  of  it.  He  was  like  a buzzing  hive  of  bees.  But  no 
one  noticed  it,  himself  least  of  all. 

Like  all  children,  he  hummed  perpetually  at  every  hour  of 
the  day.  Whatever  he  was  doing — whether  he  were  walking  in 
the  street,  hopping  on  one  foot,  or  lying  on  the  floor  at  his 
grandfather^s,  with  his  head  in  his  hands,  absorbed  in  the 
pictures  of  a book,  or  sitting  in  his  little  chair  in  the  darkest 
corner  of  the  kitchen,  dreaming  aimlessly  in  the  twilight — al- 


THE  DAWN 


79 


ways  the  monotonous  murmuring  of  his  little  trumpet  was  to 
be  heard,  played  with  lips  closed  and  cheeks  blown  out.  His 
mother  seldom  paid  any  heed  to  it,  but,  once  in  a while,  she 
would  protest. 

When  he  was  tired  of  this  state  of  half-sleep  he  would  have 
to  move  and  make  a noise.  Then  he  made  music,  singing  it 
at  the  top  of  his  voice.  He  had  made  tunes  for  every  occasion. 
He  had  a tune  for  splashing  in  his  wash-basin  in  the  morning, 
like  a little  duck.  He  had  a tune  for  sitting  on  the  piano-stool 
in  front  of  the  detested  instrument,  and  another  for  getting 
off  it,  and  this  was  a more  brilliant  affair  than  the  other.  He 
had  one  for  his  mother  putting  the  soup  on  the  table ; he  used 
to  go  before  her  then  blowing  a blare  of  trumpets.  He  played 
triumphal  marches  by  which  to  go  solemnly  frona  the  dining- 
room  to  the  bedroom.  Sometimes  he  would  organize  little 
cessions  with  his  two  small  brothers;  all  then  would  file  out 
gravely,  one  after  another,  and  each  had  a tune  to  march  to. 
But,  as  was  right  and  proper,  Jean-Christophe  kept  the  best 
for  himself.  Every  one  of  his  tunes  was  strictly  appropriated 
to  its  special  occasion,  and  Jean-Christophe  never  by  any  chance 
confused  them.  Anybody  else  would  have  made  mistakes,  but 
he  knew  the  shades  of  difference  between  them  exactly. 

One  day  at  his  grandfather^s  house  he  was  going  round  the 
room  clicking  his  heels,  head  up  and  chest  out;  he  went  round 
and  round  and  round,  so  that  it  was  a wonder  he  did  not  turn  t 
sick,  and  played  one  of  his  compositions.  The  old  man,  who 
was  shaving,  stopped  in  the  middle  of  it,  and,  with  his  face 
covered  with  lather,  came  to  look  at  him,  and  said: 

What  are  you  singing,  boy  ? 

Jean-Christophe  said  he  did  not  know. 

Sing  it  again ! said  J ean  Michel. 

Jean-Christophe  tried;  he  could  not  remember  the  tune. 
Proud  of  having  attracted  his  grandfather’s  attention,  he  tried 
to  make  him  admire  his  voice,  and  sang  after  his  own  fashion 
an  air  from  some  opera,  but  that  was  not  what  the  old  man 
wanted.  Jean  Michel  said  nothing,  and  seemed  not  to  notice, 
him  any  more.  But  he  left  the  door  of  his  room  ajar  while^ 
the  boy  was  playing  alone  in  the  next  room. 

A few  days  later  Jean-Christophe,  with  the  chairs  arranged 


80  JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


'I  about  him,  was  playing  a comedy  in  music,  which  he  had  made 
fl;^  scraps  that  he  remembered  from  the  theater,  and  he  was 

'f  making  steps  and  bows,  as  he  had  seen  them  done  in  a minuet, 

I and  addressing  himself  to  the  portrait  of  Beethoven  which 

I'l  hung  above  the  table.  As  he  turned  with  a pirouette  he  saw 

■fli'  grandfather  watching  him  through  the  half-open  door.  He 

thought  the  old  man  was  laughing  at  him;  he  was  abashed,  and 
stopped  dead;  he  ran  to  the  window,  and  pressed  his  face 
against  the  panes,  pretending  that  he  had  been  watching  some- 
thing of  the  greatest  interest.  But  the  old  man  said  nothing; 
he  came  to  him  and  kissed  him,  and  Jean-Christophe  saw  that 
, he  was  pleased.  His  vanity  made  the  most  of  these  signs; 

: \ he  was  clever  enough  to  see  that  he  had  been  appreciated; 

\ but  he  did  not  know  exactly  which  his  grandfather  had  admired 
j ; most — his  talent  as  a dramatic  author,  or  as  a musician,  or  ‘ 

I .I  Us  a singer,  or  as  a dancer.  He  inclined  to  the  latter,  for  he 
I ''  prided  himself  on  this.  * 

, i'  A week  later,  when  he  had  forgotten  the  whole  affair,  his  t 

grandfather  said  mysteriously  that  he  had  something  to  show  ' 

him.  He  opened  his  desk,  took  out  a music-book,  and  put  it  ' 

j . on  the  rack  of  the  piano,  and  told  the  boy  to  play.  Jean-Chris-  1 

i tophe  was  very  much  interested,  and  deciphered  it  fairly  well.  . 

i i|  The  notes  were  written  by  hand  in  the  old  man’s  large  hand-  i 

f writing,  and  he  had  taken  especial  pains  with  it.  The  headings  ? 

were  adorned  with  scrolls  and  flourishes.  After  some  moments  | 

the  old  man,  who  was  sitting  beside  Jean-Christophe  turning  ? 

the  pages  for  him,  asked  him  what  the  music  was.  Jean-  t 

Christophe  had  been  too  much  absorbed  in  his  playing  to  notice 
what  he  had  played,  and  said  that  he  did  not  know  it. 

“Listen!  ...  You  don’t  know  it?” 

Yes;  he  thought  he  knew  it,  but  he  did  not  know  where 
he  had  heard  it.  The  old  man  laughed. 

“ Think.” 

Jean-Christophe  shook  his  head.  .s 

“I  don’t  know.”  I 

A light  was  fast  dawning  in  his  mind;  it  seemed  to  him  that  I 


THE  DAWN* 


81 


He  blushed. 

What,  you  little  fool,  donT  you  see  that  it  is  your 
own  ? 

He  was  sure  of  it,  but  to  hear  it  said  made  his  heart  thump. 

Oh ! grandfather ! . . 

Beaming,  the  old  man  showed  him  the  book. 

See : Aria,  It  is  what  you  were  singing  on  Tuesday  when 
you  were  lying  on  the  floor.  March.  That  is  what  I asked  you 
to  sing  again  last  week,  and  you  could  not  remember  it. 
Minuet.  That  is  what  you  were  dancing  by  the  armchair. 
Look ! 

On  the  cover  was  written  in  wonderful  Gothic  letters:  ^ 

The  Pleasures  of  Childhood:  Aria,  Minuetto,  Valse,  and 
Marcia,  Op.  1,  hy  J ean-Christophe  Krafft.'^ 

Jean-Christophe  was  dazzled  by  it.  To  see  his  name,  and 
that  fine  title,  and  that  large  book — his  work!  ...  He  went 
on  murmuring: 

' Oh ! grandfather ! grandfather ! . . .^^ 

The  old  man  drew  him  to  him.  Jean-Christophe  threw  him- 
self on  his  knees,  and  hid  his  head  in  Jean  MicheFs  bosom. 
He  was  covered  with  blushes  from  his  happiness.  The  old 
man  was  even  happier,  and  went  on,  in  a voice  which  he  tried 
to  make  indifferent,  for  he  felt  that  he  was  on  the  point  of 
breaking  down: 

Of  course,  I added  the  accompaniment  and  the  harmony 
to  fit  the  song.  And  then  — he  coughed — and  then,  I added 
a trio  to  the  minuet,  because  . . . because  it  is  usual  . . . and 
then  ...  I think  it  is  not  at  all  bad.^^ 

He  played  it.  Jean-Christophe  was  very  proud  of  collaborat- 
ing with  his  grandfather. 

But,  grandfather,  you  must  put  your  name  to  it  too.’’ 

It  is  not  worth  while.  It  is  not  worth  while  others  besides 
yourself  knowing  it.  Only  ” — here  his  voice  trembled — only, 
later  on,  when  I am  no  more,  it  will  remind  you  of  your  old 
grandfather  ...  eh?  You  won’t  forget  him?” 

The  poor  old  man  did  not  say  that  he  had  been  unable  to 
resist  the  quite  innocent  pleasure  of  introducing  one  of  his  own 
unfortunate  airs  into  his  grandson’s  work,  which  he  felt  was 
destined  to  survive  him;  but  his  desire  to  share  in  this  imagi- 


82 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


/ 


nary  glory  was  very  humble  and  very  touching,  since  it  was 
enough  for  him  anonymously  to  transmit  to  posterity  a scrap 
of  his  own  thought,  so  as  not  altogether  to  perish.  Jean- 
Christophe  was  touched  by  it,  and  covered  his  face  with  kisses, 
and  the  old  man,  growing  more  and  more  tender,  kissed  his 
hair. 

You  will  remember  me  ? Later  on,  when  you  are  a good 
musician,  a great  artist,  who  will  bring  honor  to  his  family, 
to  his  art,  and  to  his  country,  when  you  are  famous,  you  will 
remember  that  it  was  your  old  grandfather  who  first  perceived  it, 
and  foretold  what  you  would  be  ? 

There  were  tears  in  his  eyes  as  he  listened  to  his  own  words. 

He  was  reluctant  to  let  such  signs  of  weakness  be  seen.  He 
had  an  attack  of  coughing,  became  moody,  and  sent  the  boy 
away  hugging  the  precious  manuscript. 

Jean-Christophe  went  home  bewildered  by  his  happiness.  The  ; 
stones  danced  about  him.  The  reception  he  had  from  his  family 
sobered  him  a little.  When  he  blurted  out  the  splendor  of  his  < 
musical  exploit  they  cried  out  upon  him.  His  mother  laughed 
at  him.  Melchior  declared  that  the  old  man  was  mad,  and 
that  he  would  do  better  to  take  care  of  himself  than  to  set  « 

about  turning  the  boy’s  head.  As  for  Jean-Christophe,  he  : 

would  oblige  by  putting  such  follies  from  his  mind,  and  sitting  ■ 
down  illico  at  the  piano  and  playing  exercises  for  four  hours.  | 

He  must  first  learn  to  play  properly;  and  as  for  composing,  | 

there  was  plenty  of  time  for  that  later  on  when  he  had  nothing  ^ 
better  to  do.  ] 

Melchior  was  not,  as  these  words  of  wisdom  might  indicate, 
trying  to  keep  the  boy  from  the  dangerous  exaltation  of  a too 
early  pride.  On  the  contrary,  he  proved  immediately  that  this 
was  not  so.  But  never  having  himself  had  any  idea  to  express 
in  music,  and  never  having  had  the  least  need  to  express  an 
idea,  he  had  come,  as  a virtuoso,  to  consider  composing  a second-  j 
ary  matter,  which  was  only  given  value  by  the  art  of  the 
executant.  He  was  not  insensible  of  the  tremendous  enthusiasm 
roused  by  great  composers  like  Hassler.  For  such  ovations  I 
he  had  the  respect  which  he  always  paid  to  success — mingled, 
perhaps,  with  a little  secret  jealousy — for  it  seemed  to  him  that  i 
such  applause  was  stolen  from  him.  But  he  knew  by  experience 


THE  DAWN 


83 


that  the  successes  of  the  great  virtuosi  are  no  less  remarkable, 
and  are  more  personal  in  character,  and  therefore  more  fruitful 
of  agreeable  and  flattering  consequences.  He  affected  to  pay 
profound  homage  to  the  genius  of  the  master  musicians;  but 
he  took  a great  delight  in  telling  absurd  anecdotes  of  them, 
presenting  their  intelligence  and  morals  in  a lamentable  light. 
He  placed  the  virtuoso  at  the  top  of  the  artistic  ladder,  for, 
he  said,  it  is  well  known  that  the  tongue  is  the  noblest  member 
of  the  body,  and  what  would  thought  be  without  words  ? What 
would  music  be  without  the  executant  ? But  whatever  may  have 
been  the  reason  for  the  scolding  that  he  gave  Jean-Christophe, 
it  was  not  without  its  uses  in  restoring  some  common  sense 
to  the  boy,  who  was  almost  beside  himself  with  hi*s  grand- 
father’s praises.  It  was  not  quite  enough.  Jean-Christophe, 
of  course,  decided  that  his  grandfather  was  much  cleverer  than 
his  father,  and  though  he  sat  down  at  the  piano  without  sulking, 
he  did  so  not  so  much  for  the  sake  of  obedience  as  to  be  able 
to  dream  in  peace,  as  he  always  did  while  his  fingers  ran 
mechanically  over  the  keyboard.  While  he  played  his  intermi- 
nable exercises  he  heard  a proud  voice  inside  himself  saying  over 
and  over  again : I am  a composer — a great  composer.” 

From  that  day  on,  since  he  was  a composer,  he  set  himself 
to  composing.  Before  he  had  even  learned  to  write,  he  eon- 
tinued  to  cipher  crotchets  and  quavers  on  scraps  of  paper,  which 
he  tore  from  the  household  account-books.  But  in  the  effort 
to  find  out  what  he  was  thinking,  and  to  set  it  down  in  black 
and  white,  he  arrived  at  thinking  nothing,  except  when  he 
wanted  to  think  something.  But  he  did  not  for  that  give  up 
making  musical  phrases,  and  as  he  was  a born  musician  he  made 
them  somehow,  even  if  they  meant  nothing  at  all.  Then  he 
would  take  them  in  triumph  to  his  grandfather,  who  wept  with 
joy  over  them — ^he  wept  easily  now  that  he  was  growing  old- — 
and  vowed  that  they  were  wonderful. 

All  this  was  like  to  spoil  him  altogether.  Fortunately,  his 
own  good  sense  saved  him,  helped  by  the  influence  of  a man 
who  made  no  pretension  of  having  any  influence  over  anybody, 
and  set  nothing  before  the  eyes  of  the  world  but  a common- 
sense  point  of  view.  This  man  was  Louisa’s  brother. 

Like  her,  he  was  small,  thin,  puny,  and  rather  round-shoul- 


84  JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


dered.  No  one  knew  exactly  how  old  he  was;  he  could  not  he 
more  than  forty,  but  he  looked  more  than  fifty.  He  had  a little 
wrinkled  face,  with  a pink  complexion,  and  kind  pale  blue  eyes, 
like  faded  forget-me-nots.  When  he  took  off  his  cap,  which  he 
used  fussily  to  wear  everywhere  from  his  fear  of  draughts,  he 
exposed  a little  pink  bald  head,  conical  in  shape,  which  was 
the  great  delight  of  Jean-Christophe  and  his  brothers.  They 
never  left  off  teasing  him  about  it,  asking  him  what  he  had 
done  with  his  hair,  and,  encouraged  by  Melchior’s  pleasantries, 
threatening  to  smack  it.  He  was  the  first  to  laugh  at  them, 
and  put  up  with  their  treatment  of  him  patiently.  He  was  a 
peddler;  he  used  to  go  from  village  to  village  with  a pack  on 
his  back,  containing  everything — groceries,  stationery,  eonfec- 
tionery,  handkerchiefs,  scarves,  shoes,  pickles,  almanacs,  songs, 
and  drugs.  Several  attempts  had  been  made  to  make  him  settle  ' 
down,  and  to  buy  him  a little  business — a store  or  a drapery  j 
shop.  But  he  could  not  do  it.  One  night  he  would  get  up, 
push  the  key  under  the  door,  and  set  off  again  with  his  pack.  < 
Weeks  and  months  went  by  before  he  was  seen  again.  Then  ' 
he  would  reappear.  Some  evening  they  would  hear  him  fum-  ; 
bling  at  the  door;  it  would  half  open,  and  the  little  bald 
head,  politely  uncovered,  would  appear  with  its  kind  eyes  and  j 
timid  smile.  He  would  say,  “ Good-evening,  everybody,”  care-  i 
fully  wipe  his  shoes  before  entering,  salute  everybody,  beginning  | 
with  the  eldest,  and  go  and  sit  in  the  most  remote  corner  of  f 
the  room.  There  he  would  light  his  pipe,  and  sit  huddled  ' 
up,  waiting  quietly  until  the  usual  storm  of  questions  was  over.  1 
The  two  Kraffts,  Jean-Christophe’s  father  and  grandfather,  had  ‘ 
a jeering  contempt  for  him.  The  little  freak  seemed  ridiculous 
to  them,  and  their  pride  was  touched  by  the  low  degree  of  the 
peddler.  They  made  him  feel  it,  but  he  seemed  to  take  no 
notice  of  it,  and  showed  them  a profound  respect  which  dis- 
armed them,  especially  the  old  man,  who  was  very  sensitive  to 
what  people  thought  of  him.  They  used  to  crush  him  with 
heavy  pleasantries,  which  often  brought  the  blush  to  Louisa’s 
cheeks.  Accustomed  to  bow  without  dispute  to  the  intellectual 
superiority  of  the  Kraffts,  she  had  no  doubt  that  her  husband  ; 
and  father-in-law  were  right ; but  she  loved  her  brother,  and 
her  brother  had  for  her  a dumb  adoration.  They  were  the  . 


THE  DAWN* 


85 


only  members  of  their  family,  and  they  were  both  humble, 
crushed,  and  thrust  aside  by  life;  they  were  united  in  sadness 
and  tenderness  by  a bond  of  mutual  pity  and  common  suffer- 
ing, borne  in  secret.  With  the  Kraffts — robust,  noisy,  brutal, 
solidly  built  for  living,  and  living  joyously — these  two  weak, 
kindly  creatures,  out  of  their  setting,  so  to  speak,  outside  life, 
understood  and  pitied  each  other  without  ever  saying  anything 
about  it. 

Jean-Christophe,  with  the  cruel  carelessness  of  childhood, 
shared  the  contempt  of  his  father  and  grandfather  for  the  little 
peddler.  He  made  fun  of  him,  and  treated  him  as  a comic 
figure;  he  worried  him  with  stupid  teasing,  which  his  uncle 
bore  with  his  unshakable  phlegm.  But  Jean-Christophe  loved 
him,  without  quite  knowing  why.  He  loved  him  first  of  all 
as  a plaything  with  which  he  did  what  he  liked.  He  loved  him 
also  because  he  always  gave  him  something  nice — a dainty,  a 
picture,  an  amusing  toy.  The  little  man’s  return  was  a joy 
for  the  children,  for  he  always  had  some  surprise  for  them. 
Poor  as  he  was,  he  always  contrived  to  bring  them  each  a pres- 
ent, and  he  never  forgot  the  birthday  of  any  one  of  the  family. 
He  always  turned  up  on  these  august  days,  and  brought  out 
of  his  pocket  some  jolly  present,  lovingly  chosen.  They  were 
so  used  to  it  that  they  hardly  thought  of  thanking  him;  it 
seemed  natural,  and  he  appeared  to  be  sufficiently  repaid  by 
the  pleasure  he  had  given.  But  Jean-Christophe,  who  did  not 
sleep  very  well,  and  during  the  night  used  to  turn  over  in  his 
mind  the  events  of  the  day,  used  sometimes  to  think  that  his 
uncle  was  very  kind,  and  he  used  to  be  filled  with  floods  of 
gratitude  to  the  poor  man.  He  never  showed  it  when  the 
day  came,  because  he  thought  that  the  others  would  laugh  at 
him.  Besides,  he  was  too  little  to  see  in  kindness  all  the  rare 
value  that  it  has.  In  the  language  of  children,  kind  and  stupid 
are  almost  synonymous,  and  Uncle  Gottfried  seemed  to  be  the 
living  proof  of  it. 

One  evening  when  Melchior  was  dining  out,  Gottfried  was 
left  alone  in  the  living-room,  while  Louisa  put  the  children 
to  bed.  He  went  out,  and  sat  by  the  river  a few  yards  away 
from  the  house.  Jean-Christophe,  having  nothing  better  to  do, 
followed  him,  and,  as  usual,  tormented  him  with  his  puppy 


86  JEAN-CHEISTOPHE  ^ 

tricks  until  he  was  out  of  breath,  and  dropped  down  on  the 
grass  at  his  feet.  Lying  on  his  belly,  he  buried  his  nose  in 
the  turf.  When  he  had  recovered  his  breath,  he  cast  about  tor 
some  new  crazy  thing  to  say.  When  he  found  it  he  shouted 
it  out,  and  rolled  about  with  laughing,  with  his  face  still  buried 
in  the  earth.  He  received  no  answer.  Surprised  by  the  silence, 
he  raised  his  head,  and  began  to  repeat  his  joke.  He  saw  Gott- 
fried’s face  lit  up  by  the  last  beams  of  the  setting  sun  cast 
through  golden  mists.  He  swallowed  down  his  words.  Gott- 
fried smiled  with  his  eyes  half  closed  and  his  mouth  half  open, 
and  in  his  sorrowful  face  was  an  expression  of  sadness  and 
unutterable  melancholy.  Jean-Christophe,  with  his  face  in  his 
hands,  watched  him.  The  night  came;  little  by  little  Gott- 
fried’s face  disappeared.  Silence  reigned.  Jean-Christophe  in 
his  turn  was  filled  with  the  mysterious  impressions  which  had 
been  refiected  on  Gottfried’s  face.  He  fell  into  a vague  stupor. 
The  earth  was  in  darkness,  the  sky  was  bright;  the  stars  peeped 
out.  The  little  waves  of  the  river  chattered  against  the  bank. 
The  boy  grew  sleepy.  Without  seeing  them,  he  bit  off  little 
blades  of  grass.  A grasshopper  chirped  near  him.  It  seemed 
to  him  that  he  was  going  to  sleep. 

Suddenly,  in  the  dark,  Gottfried  began  to  sing.  He  sang 
in  a weak,  husky  voice,  as  though  to  himself;  he  could  not 
have  been  heard  twenty  yards  away.  But  there  was  sincerity 
and  emotion  in  his  voice;  it  was  as  though  he  were  thinking 
aloud,  and  that  through  the  song,  as  through  clear  water,  the 
very  inmost  heart  of  him  was  to  be  seen.  Never  had  Jean- 
Christophe  heard  such  singing,  and  never  had  he  heard  such 
a song.  Slow,  simple,  childish,  it  moved  gravely,  sadly,  a little 
monotonously,  never  hurrying — ^with  long  pauses  then  setting 
out  again  on  its  way,  careless  where  it  arrived,  and  losing 
itself  in  the  night.  It  seemed  to  come  from  far  away,  and  it 
went  no  man  knows  whither.  Its  serenity  was  full  of  sorrow, 
and  beneath  its  seeming  peace  there  dwelt  an  agony  of  the 
ages.  Jean-Christophe  held  his  breath;  he  dared  not  move; 
he  was  cold  with  emotion.  When  it  was  done  he  crawled  to- 
wards Gottfried,  and  in  a choking  voice  said: 

« Uncle ! ” 

Gottfried  did  not  reply. 


THE  DAWH 


8T 


“ Uncle ! ” repeated  the  boy,  placing  his  hands  and  chin  om 
Gottfried’s  knees. 

Gottfried  said  kindly: 

“ Well,  boy  ...” 

“What  is  it,  uncle?  Tell  me!  What  were  you  sing- 
ing?” 

“I  don’t  know.” 

“ Tell  me  what  it  is ! ” 

“I  don’t  know.  Just  a song.” 

“ A song  that  you  made.” 

“ No,  not  I ! Wliat  an  idea!  ...  It  is  an  old  song.” 

“Who  made  it?” 

“No  one  knows.  . . .” 

“When?” 

“No  one  knows.  . . .” 

“ When  you  were  little  ? ” 

“ Before  I was  born,  before  my  father  was  horn,  and  before 
his  father,  and  before  his  father’s  father.  ...  It  has  always 

been.”  , 

“ How  strange ! No  one  has  ever  told  me  about  it. 

He  thought  for  a moment. 

“Uncle,  do  you  know  any  other?” 

“ Yes.” 

“ Sing  another,  please.” 

“Why  should  I sing  another?  One  is  enough.  One  sings 
when  one  wants  to  sing,  when  one  has  to  sing.  One  must  not 
sing  for  the  fun  of  it.” 

“But  what  about  when  one  makes  music?” 

“ That  is  not  music.” 

The  boy  was  lost  in  thought.  He  did  not  quite  understand. 
But  he  asked  for  no  explanation.  It  was  true,  it  was  not  music, 
not  like  all  the  rest.  He  went  on : 

“Uncle,  have  you  ever  made  them?” 

“ Made  what  ? ” 

“ Songs ! ” 

“Songs?  Oh!  How  should  I make  them?  They  can’t  be 
made.” 

With  his  usual  logic  the  boy  ii'sisted : 

“ But,  uncle,  it  must  have  beeiv  made  once.  . . .” 


,jl  Gottfried  shook  his  head  obstinately. 

1'^  ^^It  has  always  been/^ 

The  boy  returned  to  the  attack: 


^^But,  uncle,  isnT  it  possible  to  make  other  songs,  new 
M songs 

v|i : Why  make  them  ? There  are  enough  for  everything.  There 

1 are  songs  for  when  you  are  sad,  and  for  when  you  are  gay; 

for  when  you  are  weary,  and  for  when  you  are  thinking  of 
^ home;  for  when  you  despise  yourself,  because  you  have  been 

a vile  sinner,  a worm  upon  the  earth;  for  when  you  want  to 
weep,  because  people  have  not  been  kind  to  you;  and  for  when 
your  heart  is  glad  because  the  world  is  beautiful,  and  you  see 
i God^s  heaven,  which,  like  Him,  is  always  kind,  and  seems  to 

laugh  at  you.  . . . There  are  songs  for  everything,  everything. 

^ ; Why  should  I make  them  ?^^ 

; ri  To  be  a great  man ! said  the  boy,  full  of  his  grandfather^s  ' 

i ' teaching  and  his  simple  dreams. 

' Gottfried  laughed  softly.  Jean-Christophe,  a little  hurt,  t 

asked  him:  * 

^^Why  are  you  laughing 

Gottfried  said:  ; 

’ ^^Oh!  I?  ...  I am  nobody.^^  ^ 

ii'i  He  kissed  the  boy’s  head,  and  said : I 

I ^^You  want  to  be  a great  man?”  { 

^^Yes,”  said  Jean-Christophe  proudly.  He  thought  Gott-  \ 
fried  would  admire  him.  But  Gottfried  replied : ! 

^^What  for?”  \ 

Jean-Christophe  was  taken  aback.  He  thought  for  a moment,  ‘ 

and  said : 

To  make  beautiful  songs ! ” 

Gottfried  laughed  again,  and  said:  v 

You  want  to  make  beautiful  songs,  so  as  to  be  a great  man;  ■ 
and  you  want  to  be  a great  man,  so  as  to  make  beautiful  songs. 
You  are  like  a dog  chasing  its  own  tail.” 

Jean-Christophe  was  dashed.  At  any  other  time  he  would 
not  have  borne  his  uncle  laughing  at  him,  he  at  whom  he  was  | 
used  to  laughing.  And,  at  the  same  time,  he  would  never  | 
have  thought  Gottfried  cleve?  enough  to  stump  him  with  an  | 
argument.  He  cast  about  for  some  answer  or  some  imper-| 


THE  DAWN  89 

tinence  to  throw  at  him,  but  could  find  none.  Gottfried  went 
on: 

"When  you  are  as  great  as  from  here  to  Coblentz,  you  will 
never  make  a single  song.” 

Jean-Christophe  revolted  on  that. 

"And  if  I will!  . . .” 

" The  more  you  want  to,  the  less  you  can.  To  make  songs, 
you  have  to  be  like  those  creatures.  Listen.  . . .” 

The  moon  had  risen,  round  and  gleaming,  behind  the  fields. 
A silvery  mist  hovered  above  the  ground  and  the  shimmering 
waters.  The  frogs  croaked,  and  in  the  meadows  the  melodious 
fluting  of  the  toads  arose.  The  shrill  tremolo  of  the  gr^s- 
hoppers  seemed  to  answer  the  twinkling  of  th*^' stars.  The  wind 
rustled  softly  in  the  branches  of  the  alders.  From  the  hills 
above  the  river  there  came  down  the  sweet  light  song  of  a 
nightingale. 

" What  need  is  there  to  sing?  ” sighed  Gottfried,  after  a long 
silence.  (.It  was  not  clear  whether  he  were  talking  to  himself 
or  to  Jean-Christophe.)  " Don’t  they  sing  sweeter  than  any- 
thing that  you  could  make  ? ” 

Jean-Christophe  had  often  heard  these  sounds  of  the  night, 
and  he  loved  them.  But  never  had  he  heard  them  as  he  heard 
them  now.  It  was  true ; what  need  was  there  to  sing  ? . . . His 
heart  was  full  of  tenderness  and  sorrow.  He  was  fain  to  em- 
brace the  meadows,  the  river,  the ‘sky,  the  clear  stars.  He  was 
filled  with  love  for  his  uncle  Gottfried,  who  seemed  to  him 
now  the  best,  the  cleverest,  the  most  beautiful , of  men.  He 
thought  how  he  had  misjudged  him,  and  he  thought  that  his 
uncle  was  sad  because  he,  Jean-Christophe,  had  misjudged  him. 
He  was  remorseful.  He  wanted  to  cry  out : " Uncle,  do  not 
be  sad  I I will  not  be  naughty  again.  Forgive  me,  I love  you ! ” 
But  he  dared  not.  And  suddenly  he  threw  himself  into  Gott- 
fried’s arms,  but  the  words  would  not  come,  only  he  repeated, 
" I love  you  I ” and  kissed  him  passionately.  Gottfried  was  sur- 
prised and  touched,  and  went  on  saying,  "What?  What? 
and  kissed  him.  Then  he  got  up,  took  him  by  the  hand,  and 
said:  "We  must  go  in.”  Jean-Christophe  was  sad  because 
his  uncle  had  not  understood  him.  But  as  they  came  to  the 
house,  Gottfried  said : " If  you  like  we’ll  go  again  to  hear  God’s 


90 


JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 


music,  and  I will  sing  you  some  more  songs.”  And  when  Jean- 
Christophe  kissed  him  gratefully  as  they  said  good-night,  he 
saw  that  his  uncle  had  understood. 

Thereafter  they  often  went  for  walks  together  in  the  evening, 
and  they  walked  without  a word  along  hy  the  river,  or  through 
the  fields.  Gottfried  slowly  smoked  his  pipe,  and  Jean-Chris- 
tophe,  a little  frightened  by  the  darkness,  would  give  him  his 
hand.  They  would  sit  down  on  the  grass,  and  after  a few 
moments  of  silence  Gottfried  would  talk  to  him  about  the  stars 
and  the  clouds;  he  taught  him  to  distinguish  the  breathing  of 
the  earth,  air,  and  water,  the  songs,  cries,  and  sounds  of  the 
little  worlds  of  flying,  creeping,  hopping,  and  swimming  things 
swarming  in  the  darkness,  and  the  signs  of  rain  and  fine 
weather,  and  the  countless  instruments  of  the  symphony  of  the  ■ 
night.  Sometimes  Gottfried  would  sing  tunes,  sad  or  gay,  but  . 
always  of  the  same  kind,  and  always  in  the  end  J ean-Christophe  ; 
would  be  brought  to  the  same  sorrow.  But  he  would  never  ; 
sing  more  than  one  song  in  an  evening,  and  Jean-Christophe  ^ 
noticed  that  he  did  not  sing  gladly  when  he  v/as  asked  to  do  ; 
so;  it  had  to  come  of  itself,  just  when  he  wanted  to.  Some-  ; 
times  they  had  to  wait  for  a long  time  without  speaking,  and  , 
just  when  Jean-Christophe  was  beginning  to  think,  “ He  is  not  : 
going  to  sing  this  evening,”  Gottfried  would  make  up  his  mind.  ; 

One  evening,  when  nothing  would  induce  Gottfried  to  sing,  , 
Jean-Christophe  thought  of  submitting  to  him  one  of  his  own  j 
small  compositions,  in  the  making  of  which  he  found  so  much  ' 
trouble  and  pride.  He  wanted  to  show  what  an  artist  he  was.  ^ 
Gottfried  listened  very  quietly,  and  then  said : i 

That  is  very  ugly,  my  poor  dear  Jean-Christophe ! ” 
Jean-Christophe  was  so  hurt  that  he  could  find  nothing  to  i 
say.  Gottfried  went  on  pityingly: 

“Why  did  you  do  it?  It  is  so  ugly!  No  one  forced  you 
to  do  it.”  j 

Hot  with  anger,  Jean-Christophe  protested: 

“ My  grandfather  thinks  my  music  fine.”  I 

“ Ah  1 ” said  Gottfried,  not  turning  a hair.  “ No  doubt  he 
is  right.  He  is  a learned  man.  He  knows  all  about  music.  . 
I know  nothing  about  it.  ...” 

And  after  a moment: 


THE  DAWN 


91 


" But  I think  that  is  very  ugly.” 

He  looked  quietly  at  Jean-Christophe,  and  saw  his  angry  face, 
and  smiled,  and  said : 

“Have  you  composed  any  others?  Perhaps  I shall  like  the 
others  better  than  that.” 

Jean-Christophe  thought  that  his  other  compositions  might 
wipe  out  the  impression  of  the  first,  and  he  sang  them  all. 
Gottfried  said  nothing;  he  waited  until  they  were  finished. 
Then  he  shook  his  head,  and  with  profound  conviction  said: 

“ They  are  even  more  ugly.” 

Jean-Christophe  shut  his  lips,  and  his  chin  trembled;  he 
wanted  to  cry.  Gottfried  went  on  as  though  he  himself  were 
upset. 

“ How  ugly  they  are ! ” 

Jean-Christophe,  with  tears  in  his  voice,  cried  out: 

“But  why  do  you  say  they  are  ugly?  ” 

Gottfried  looked  at  him  with  his  frank  eyes. 

“Why?  ...  I don’t  know.  . . . Wait.  . . . They  are  ugly 

. . . first,  because  they  are  stupid.  . . . Yes,  that’s  it.  . . . 

They  are  stupid,  they  don’t  mean  anything.  ...  You  see? 

When  you  wrote,  you  had  nothing  to  say.  Why  did  you  write 

them?” 

“I  don’t  know,”  said  Jean-Christophe,  in  a piteous  voice. 

“ I wanted  to  write  something  pretty.” 

- “ There  you  are ! You  wrote  for  the  sake  of  writing.  You 

wrote  because  you  wanted  to  be  a great  musician,  and  to  be 
admired.  You  have  been  proud ; you  have  been  a liar ; you 
have  been  punished.  ...  You  see ! A man  is  always  punished 
when  he  is  proud  and  a liar  in  music.  Music  must  be  modest  , 
and  sincere — or  else,  what  is  it?  Impious,  a blasphemy  of  the 
Lord,  who  has  given  us  song  to  tell  the  honest  truth.”  ' 

He  saw  the  boy’s  distress,  and  tried  to  kiss  him.  But  Jean- 
Christophe  turned  angrily  away,  and  for  several  days  he  sulked. 
He  hated  Gottfried.  But  it  was  in  vain  that  he  said  over  and 
over  to  himself : “ He  is  an  ass ! He  knows  nothing — nothing  I 
My  grandfather,  who  is  much  cleverer,  likes  my  music.”  In 
his  heart  he  knew  that  his  uncle  was  right,  and  Gottfried’s  words 
were  graven  on  his  inmost  soul ; he  was  ashamed  to  have  been 
a liar. 


92 


JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 


/ 


And,  in  spite  of  his  resentment,  he  always  thought  of  it 
when  he  was  writing  music,  and  often  he  tore  up  what  he  had 
written,  being  ashamed  already  of  what  Gottfried  would  have 
thought  of  it.  When  he  got  over  it,  and  wrote  a melody  which 
he  knew  to  be  not  quite  sincere,  he  hid  it  carefully  from  his 
uncle;  he  was  fearful  of  his  judgment,  and  was  quite  happy 
when  Gottfried  just  said  of  one  of  his  pieces : “ That  is  not  so 
very  ugly.  • ^ • I lik^  it.  . . .” 

Sometimes^  by  way  of  revenge,  he  used  to  trick  him  by  giving 
him  as  his  own  melodies  from  the  great  musicians,  and  he  was 
delighted  when  it  happened  that  Gottfried  disliked  them  heart- 
ily. But  that  did  not  trouble  Gottfried.  He  would  laugh  loudly 
when  he  saw  Jean-Christophe  clap  his  hands  and  dance  about  , 
him  delightedly,  and  he  always  returned  to  his  usual  argument:  , 
“It  is  well  enough  written,  but  it  says  nothing.”  He  always  ; 
refused  to  be  present  at  one  of  the  little  concerts  given  in  ; 
Melchior’s  house.  However  beautiful  the  music  might  be,  he 
would  begin  to  yawn  and  look  sleepy  with  boredom.  Very  soon  ! 
he  would  be  unable  to  bear  it  any  longer,  and  would  steal  away  j 
quietly.  He  used  to  say:  ; 

“ You  see,  my  boy,  everything  that  you  write  in  the  house  ' 
is  not  music.  Music  in  a house  is  like  sunshine  in  a room.  ; 
Music  is  to  be  found  outside  where  you  breathe  God’s  dear  fresh  j 
air.”  i 

He  was  always  talking  of  God,  for  he  was  very  pious,  unlike  | 
the  two  Kraffts,  father  and  son,  who  were  free-thinkers,  and  j 
took  care  to  eat  meat  on  Fridays.  j 

Suddenly,  for  no  apparent  reason,  Melchior  changed  his 
opinion.  Not  only  did  he  approve  of  his  father  having  put 
together  Jean-Christophe’s  inspirations,  but,  to  the  boy’s  great 
surprise,  he  spent  several  evenings  in  making  two  or  three  copies 
of  his  manuscript.  To  every  question  put  to  him  on  the  subject, 
he  replied  impressively,  “ We  shall  see ; . . .”  or  he  would  rub 
his  hands  and  laugh,  smack  the  boy’s  head  by  way  of  a joke, 
^ turn  him  up  and  blithely  spank  him.  J ean-Christophe  loathed 
^hese  familiarities,  but  he  saw  that  his  father  was  pleased,  and 
did  not  know  why. 

Then  there  were  mysterious  confabulations  between  Melchior  ■ 


THE  DAWN 


93 


and  his  father.  And  one  evening  Jean-Christophe,  to  his  aston- 
ishment, learned  that  he,  Jean-Christophe,  had  dedicated  to 
H.S.H.  the  Grand  Duke  Leopold  the  Pleasures  of  Childhood,. 
Melchior  had  sounded  the  disposition  of  the  Prince,  who  had 
shown  himself  graciously  inclined  to  accept  the  homage.  There- 
upon Melchior  declared  that  without  losing  a moment  they  must, 
primo,  draw  up  the  official  request  to  the  Prince;  secondo, 
publish  the  work ; tertio,  organize  a concert  to  give  it  a hearing. 

There  were  further  long  conferences  between  Melchior  and 
Jean  Michel.  They  argued  heatedly  for  two  or  three  evenings. 
It  was  forbidden  to  interrupt  them.  Melchior  wrote,  erased; 
erased,  wrote.  The  old  man  talked  loudly,  as  though  he  were 
reciting  verses.,  Sometimes  they  squabbled  or  thumped  on  the 
table  because  they  could  not  find  a word. 

Then  Jean-Christophe  was  called,  made  to  sit  at  the  table 
with  a pen  in  his  hand,  his  father  on  his  right,  his  grandfather 
on  his  left,  and  the  old  man  began  to  dictate  words  which 
he  did  not  understand,  because  he  found  it  difficult  to  write 
every  word  in  his  enormous  letters,  because  Melchior  was  shout- 
ing in  his  ear,  and  because  the  old  man  declaimed  with  such 
emphasis  that  Jean-Christophe,  put  out  by  the  sound  of  the 
words,  could  not  bother  to  listen  to  their  meaning.  The  old 
man  was  no  less  in  a state  of  emotion.  He  could  not  sit  still, 
and  he  walked  up  and  down  the  room,  involuntarily  illustrating 
the  text  of  what  he  read  with  gestures,  but  he  came  every  minute 
to  look  over  what  the  boy  had  written,  and  Jean-Christophe^. 
frightened  by  the  two  large  faces  looking  over  his  shoulder, 
put  out  his  tongue,  and  held  his  pen  clumsily.  A mist  floated 
before  his  eyes;  he  made  too  many  strokes,  or  smudged  what 
he  had  written ; and  Melchior  roared,  and  J ean  Michel  stormed  ;■ 
and  he  had  to  begin  again,  and  then  again,  and  when  he  thought 
that  they  had  at  last  come  to  an  end,  a great  blot  fell  on  the 
immaculate  page.  Then  they  pulled  his  ears,  and  he  burst 
into  tears ; but  they  forbade  him  to  weep,  because  he  was  spoiling 
the  paper,  and  they  began  to  dictate,  beginning  all  over  again, 
and  he  thought  it  would  go  on  like  that  to  the  end  of  his' 
life. 

At  last  it  was  finished,  and  Jean  Michel  leaned  against  the 
mantelpiece,  and  read  over  their  handiwork  in  a voice  trembling 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


/ 


with  pleasure,  while  Melchior  sat  straddled  across  a chair,  and 
looked  at  the  ceiling  and  wagged  his  chair  and,  as  a connoisseur, 
rolled  round  his  tongue  the  style  of  the  following  epistle: 

Most  Noble  and  Sublime  Highness!  Most 
Gracious  Lord! 

From  my  fourth  year  Music  has  been  the  first  occupation 
<of  my  childish  days.  So  soon  as  I allied  myself  to  the  noble 
Muse,  who  roused  my  soul  to  pure  harmony,  I loved  her,  and, 
as  it  seemed  to  me,  she  returned  my  love.  Now  I am  in  my 
sixth  year,  and  for  some  time  my  Muse  in  hours  of  inspiration 
has  whispered  in  my  ears:  ^Be  bold!  Be  bold!  Write  down 

the  harmonies  of  thy  soul ! ’ ^ Six  years  old,^  thought  I,  ^ and  , 

how  should  I be  bold?  What  would  the  learned  in  the  art  say 
of  me  ? ^ I hesitated.  I trembled.  But  my  Muse  insisted,  I ; 
obeyed.  I wrote.  ] 

•^^And  now  shall  I, 

X 

0 Most  Suhlime  Highness!  ’ 

— shall  I have  the  temerity  and  audacity  to  place  upon  the  , 
steps  of  Thy  Throne  the  first-fruits  of  my  youthful  labors?  . • • ' 
Shall  I make  so  bold  as  to  hope  that  Thou  wilt  let  fall  upon  ; 
them  the  august  approbation  of  Thy  paternal  regard?  ...  ^ 

“ Oh,  yes ! For  Science  and  the  Arts  have  ever  found  in  j 
Thee  their  sage  Maecenas,  their  generous  champion,  and  talent  ) 
puts  forth  its  flowers  under  the  aegis  of  Thy  holy  protection.  | 
“ In  this  profound  and  certain  faith  I dare,  then,  approach  ; 
Thee  with  these  youthful  efforts.  Eeceive  them  as  a pure  offer-' 
ing  of  my  childish  veneration,  and  of  Thy  goodness  deign, 

0 Most  Sublime  Highness! 

to  glance  at  them,  and  at  their  young  author,  who  bows  at  Thy 
feet  deeply  and  in  humility! 

" From  the  most  submissive,  faithful,  and  obedient  servant 
<of  His  Most  Noble  and  Most  Sublime  Highness, 


“ Jean-Christophe  Keafft.” 


THE  DAWN 


95 


Jean-Christophe  heard  nothing.  He  was  very  happy  to  have 
finished,  and,  fearing  that  he  would  be  made  to 
he  ran  away  to  the  fields.  He  had  no  idea  of  what  he  had 
written,  and  he  cared  not  at  all.  But  when  the  old  “^n  had 
finished  his  reading  he  began  again  to  taste  the  full  fiavor  of  it, 
and  when  the  second  reading  came  to  an  end  Melchior  and  he 
declared  that  it  was  a little  masterpiece.  That  was  also  the 
opinion  of  the  Grand  Duke,  to  whom  the  letter  was  presented, 
with  a copy  of  the  musical  work.  He  was  kind  enough  to 
send  word  that  he  found  both  quite  charming  He  granted 
uermission  for  the  concert,  and  ordered  that  the  hall  of  is 
Academy  of  Music  should  be  put  at  Melchior’s  disposal  and 
deigned  to  promise  that  he  would  have  the  young  artist  pre- 
sented to  himself  on  the  day  of  the  performance. 

Melchior  set  about  organizing  the  concert  as  quickly  as  pos- 
sible. He  engaged  the  support  of  the  Hof  Musik  Verein,  and 
as  the  success  of  his  first  ventures  had  blown  out  his  sense  of 
proportion,  he  undertook  at  the  same  time  to  publish  a mag- 
nificent edition  of  the  Pleasures  of  Childhood.  He  wanted  to 
have  printed  on  the  cover  of  it  a portrait  of  Jean-Chnstophe 
at  the  piano,  with  himself,  Melchior,  standing  by  his  side 
violin  in  hand.  He  had  to  abandon  that,  not  on  account  of 
the  cost— Melchior  did  not  stop  at  any  expense— but  because 
there  was  not  time  enough.  He  fell  back  on  an  allegorical 
design  representing  a cradle,  a trumpet,  a drum,  a wooden  horse, 
grouped  round  a lyre  which  put  forth  rays  like  the  sun.  ^ e 
title-page  bore,  together  with  a long  dedication,  in  whic  e 
name  of  the  Prince  stood  out  in  enormous  letters,  a notice  to 
the  effect  that  “ Herr  Jean-Christophe  Krafft  was  six  years  old. 
He  was,  in  fact,  seven  and  a half.  The  printing 
was  very  expensive.  To  meet  the  bill  for  it,  Jean  Michel  had 
to  sell  an  old  eighteenth-century  chest,  carved  with  faces,  which 
he  had  never  consented  to  sell,  in  spite  of  the  repeated  offers 
of  Wormser,  the  furniture-dealer.  But  Melchior  had  no  doubt 
but  the  subscriptions  would  cover  the  cost,  and  beyond  that  the 
expenses  of  printing  the  composition.  ^ . j t 

One  other  question  occupied  his  mind:  how  to  dress  Jean- 
Christophe  on  the  day  of  the  concert.  There  was  a famdy 
council  to  decide  the  matter.  Melchior  would  have  liked  the 


96  JEAN-CHEISTOPHE  / 


boy  to  appear  in  a short  frock  and  bare  legs,  like  a child  of 
four.  But  Jean-Christophe  was  very  large  for  his  age,  and 
everybody  knew  him.  They  could  not  hope  to  deceive  any  one. 
Melchior  had  a great  idea.  He  decided  that  the  boy  should 
wear  a dress-coat  and  white  tie.  In  vain  did  Louisa  protest 
that  they  would  make  her  poor  boy  ridiculous.  Melchior  antici- 
pated exactly  the  success  and  merriment  that  would  be  pro- 
duced by  such  an  unexpected  appearance.  It  was  decided  on, 
and  the  tailor  came  and  measured  Jean-Christophe  for  his 
little  coat.  He  had  also  to  have  fine  linen  and  patent-leather 
pumps,  and  all  that  swallowed  up  their  last  penny.  Jean- 
Christophe  was  very  uncomfortable  in  his  new  clothes.  To 
make  him  used  to  them  they  made  him  try  on  his  various  gar- 
ments. For  a whole  month  he  hardly  left  the  piano-stool. 
They  taught  him  to  bow.  He  had  never  a moment  of  liberty. 
He  raged  against  it,  but  dared  not  rebel,  for  he  thought  that  ; 
he  was  going  to  accomplish  something  startling.  He  was  both 
proud  and  afraid  of  it.  They  pampered  him ; they  were  afraid  t 
he  would  catch  cold;  they  swathed  his  neck  in  scarves;  they  ^ 
warmed  his  boots  in  case  they  were  wet;  and  at  table  he  had 
the  best  of  everything.  : 

AI  last  the  great  day  arrived.  The  barber  came  to  preside  > 
his  toilet  and  curl  Jean-Christophe^s  rebellious  hair.  He  1 
did  not  leave  it  until  he  had  made  it  look  like  a sheep-skin.  ( 
All  the  family  walked  round  Jean-Christophe  and  declared  that  \ 
he  was  superb.  Melchior,  after  looking  him  up  and  down, 
and  turning  him  about  and  about,  was  seized  with  an  idea,  ^ 
and  went  off  to  fetch  a large  flower,  which  he  put  in  his  button-  ’ 
hole.  But  when  Louisa  saw  him  she  raised  her  hands,  and 
cried  out  distressfully  that  he  looked  like  a monkey.  That  hurt 
him  cruelly.  He  did  not  know  whether  to  be  ashamed  or  proud 
of  his  garb.  Instinctively  he  felt  humiliated,  and  he  was  more 
so  at  the  concert.  Humiliation  was  to  be  for  him  the  out- 
standing emotion  of  that  memorable  day. 

The  concert  was  about  to  begin.  The  hall  was  half  empty;, 
the  Grand  Duke  had  not  arrived.  One  of  those  kindly  and  - 
well-informed  friends  who  always  appear  on  these  occasions! 
came  and  told  them  that  there  was  a Council  being  held  at  | 


THE  DAWN 


97 


the  Palace,  and  that  the  Grand  Duke  would  not  come.  He  had 
it  on  good  authority.  Melchior  was  in  despair.  He  fidgeted, 
paced  up  and  down,  and  looked  repeatedly  out  of  the  window. 

Old  Jean  Michel  was  also  in  torment,  but  he  was  concerned 
for  his  grandson.  He  bombarded  him  with  instructions.  J earn 
Christophe  was  infected  by  the  nervousness  of  his  family.  He 
was  not  in  the  least  anxious  about  his  compositions,  but  he  was 
troubled  by  the  thought  of  the  bows  that  he  had  to  make  to  the 
audience,  and  thinking  of  them  brought  him  to  agony. 

However,  he  had  to  begin;  the  audience  was  gjowing  im^ 
patient.  The  orchestra  of  the  Hof  Musilc  Verein  began  the 
Coriolan  Overture.  The  boy  knew  neither  Coriolan  nor  Bee- 
thoven, for  though  he  had  often  heard  Beethoven’s  music,  he^ 
had  not  known  it.  He  never  bothered  about  the  names  of  the 
works  he  heard.  He  gave  them  names  of  his  own  invention, 
while  he  created  little  stories  or  pictures  for  them.  He  classi- 
fied them  usually  in  three  categories:  fire,  water,  and  earth, 
with  a thousand  degrees  between  each.  Mozart  belonged  almost 
always  to  water.  He  was  a meadow  by  the  side  of  a river,  a 
transparent  mist  fioating  over  the  water,  a spring  shower,  or 
a rainbow.  Beethoven  was  fire — now  a furnace  with  gigantic 
fiames  and  vast  columns  of  smoke;  now  a burning  forest,  a 
heavy  and  terrible  cloud,  hashing  lightning;  now  a wide  sky 
full  of  quivering  stars,  one  of  which  breaks  free,  swoops,  and 
dies  on  a fine  September  night  setting  the  heart  beating.  N’ow' 
the  imperious  ardor  of  that  heroic  soul  burned  him  like  fire.tjisj 
Everything  else  disappeared.  What  was  it  all  to  him? — ^Mel- 
chior in  despair,  Jean  Michel  agitated,  all  the  busy  world,  the 
audience,  the  Grand  Duke,  little"  Jean-Christophe.  What  had 
he  to  do  with  all  these?  What  lay  between  them  and  him? 
Was  that  he — ^he,  himself  ? ...  He  was  given  up  to  the  furious 
will  that  carried  him  headlong.  He  followed  it  breathlessly, 
with  tears  in  his  eyes,  and  his  legs  numb,  thrilling  from  the 
palms  of  his  hands  to  the  soles  of  his  feet.  His  blood  drummed 

Charge ! ” and  he  trembled  in  every  limb.  And  as  he  listened 
so  intensely,  hiding  behind  a curtain,  his  heart  suddenly  leaped 
violently.  The  orchestra  had  stopped  short  in  the  middle  of  a 
bar,  and  after  a moment’s  silence,  it  broke  into  a crashing  of 
brass  and  cymbals  with  a military  march,  officially  strident. 


98 


JBAN-CHEISTOPHE 


The  transition  from  one  sort  of  music  to  another  was  so  brutal, 
so  unexpected,  that  Jean-Christophe  ground  his  teeth  and 
stamped  his  foot  with  rage,  and  shook  his  fist  at  the  wall.  But 
Melchior  rejoiced.  The  Grand  Duke  had  come  in,  and  the 
orchestra  was  saluting  him  with  the  National  Anthem.  And 
in  a trembling  voice  Jean  Michel  gave  his  last  instructions  to 
his  grandson. 

The  overture  began  again,  and  this  time  was  finished.  It 
was  now  Jean-Christophe’s  turn.  Melchior  had  arranged  the 
programme  to  show  off  at  the  same  time  the  skill  of  both  father 
and  son.  They  were  to  play  together  a sonata  of  Mozart  for 
violin  and  piano.  For  the  sake  of  effect  he  had  decided  that 
Jean-Christophe  should  enter  alone.  He  was  led  to  the  entrance  . 
of  the  stage  and  showed  the  piano  at  the  front,  and  for  the 
last  time  it  was  explained  what  he  had  to  do,  and  then  he  was  ■ 
pushed  on  from  the  wings.  : 

He  was  not  much  afraid,  for  he  was  used  to  the  theater ; but 
when  he  found  himself  alone  on  the  platform,  with  hundreds  of  ; 
eyes  staring  at  him,  he  became  suddenly  so  frightened  that  in-  , 
stinctively  he  moved  backwards  and  turned  towards  the  wings 
to  go  back  again.  He  saw  his  father  there  gesticulating  and 
with  his  eyes  blazing.  He  had  to  go  on.  Besides,  the  audience  , 
had  seen  him.  As  he  advanced  there  arose  a twittering  of  ^ 
curiosity,  followed  soon  by  laughter,  which  grew  louder  and; 
louder.  Melchior  had  not  been  wrong,  and  the  boy’s  garb.; 
had  all  the  effect  anticipated.  The  audience  rocked  with  laugh-  j 
ter  at  the  sight  of  the  child  with  his  long  hair  and  gipsy  com- : 
plexion  timidly  trotting  across  the  platform  in  the  evening 
dress  of  a man  of  the  world.  They  got  up  to  see  him  better. 
Soon  the  hilarity  was  general.  There  was  nothing  unkindly 
in  it,  but  it  would  have  made  the  most  hardened  musician  lose  | 
his  head.  Jean-Christophe,  terrified  by  the  noise,  and  the  eyes  ; 
watching,  and  the  glasses  turned  upon  him,  had  only  one  idea : ! 
to  reach  the  piano  as  quickly  as  possible,  for  it  seemed  to  him  I 
a refuge,  an  island  in  the  midst  of  the  sea.  With  head  down, ; 
looking  neither  to  right  nor  left,  he  ran  quickly  across  the  plat- 
form, and  when  he  reached  the  middle  of  it,  instead  of  bowing  | 
to  the  audience,  as  had  been  arranged,  he  turned  his  back  on  | 
it,  and  plunged  straight  for  the  piano.  The  chair  was  too  high  j 


99 


THE  DAWH 

for  him  to  sit  down  without  his  father’s  help,  and  in  his  dis- 
tress, instead  of  waiting,  he  climbed  up  on  to  it  on  his  knees. 
That  increased  the  merriment  of  the  audience,  but  now  Jean- 
Christophe  was  safe.  Sitting  at  his  instrument,  he  was  afraid 

of  no  one.  , 

Melchior  came  at  last.  He  gained  by  the  good-humor  of 
the  audience,  who  welcomed  him  with  warm  applause.  The 
sonata  began.  The  boy  played  it  with  imperturbable  certainty, 
with  his  lips  pressed  tight  in  concentration,  his  eyes  fixed  on 
the  keys,  his  little  legs  hanging  down  from  the  chair.  He 
became  more  at  ease  as  the  notes  rolled  out;  he  was  among 
friends  that  he  knew.  A murmur  of  approbation  reached  him, 
and  waves  of  pride  and  satisfaction  surged  through  him  as  he 
thought  that  all  these  people  were  silent  to  listen  to  him  and 
to  admire  him.  Biit  hardly  had  he  finished  when  fear  overcame 
him  again,  and  the  applause  which  greeted  him  gave  him  more 
shame  than  pleasure.  His  shame  increased  when  Melchior  took 
him  by  the  hand,  and  advanced  with  him  to  the  edge  of  the- 
platform,  and  made  him  bow  to  the  public.  He  obeyed,  and 
bowed  very  low,  with  a funny  awkwardness;  but  he  was  hu- 
miliated, and  blushed  for  what  he  had  done,  as  though  it  were 
a thing  ridiculous  and  ugly. 

He  had  to  sit  at  the  piano  again,  and  he  played  the  Pleasures 
of  Childhood.  Then  the  audience  was  enraptured.  After  each 
piece  they  shouted  enthusiastically.  They  wanted  him  to  begin 
again,  and  he  was  proud  of  his  success  and  at  the  same  time 
almost  hurt  by  such  applause,  which  was  also  a command.  At 
the  end  the  whole  audience  rose  to  acclaim  him ; the  Grand 
Duke  led  the  applause.  But  as  Jean-Christophe  was  now  alone 
on  the  platform  he  dared  not  budge  from  his  seat.  The  ap- 
plause redoubled.  He  bent  his  head  lower  and  lower,  blushing 
and  hang-dog  in  expression,  and  he  looked  steadily  away  from 
the  audience.  Melchior  came.  He  took  him  in  his  arms,  and 
told  him  to  blow  kisses.  He  pointed  out  to  him  the  Grand 
Duke’s  box.  Jean-Christophe  turned  a deaf  ear.  Melchior  took 
his  arm,  and  threatened  him  in  a low  voice.  Then  he  did  as 
he  was  told  passively,  but  he  did  not  look  at  anybody,  he  did 
not  raise  his  eyes,  but  went  on  turning  his  head  away,  and  he 
was  unhappy.  He  was  suffering ; how,  he  did  not  know.  His 


100 


JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 


vanity  was  suffering.  He  did  not  like  the  people  who  were 
there  at  all.  It  was  no  use  their  applauding;  he  could  not 
forgive  them  for  having  laughed  and  for  being  amused  by  his 
humiliation;  he  could  not  forgive  them  for  having  seen  him 
in  such  a ridiculous  position — held  in  mid-air  to  blow  kisses. 
He  disliked  them  even  for  applauding,  and  when  Melchior  did 
at  last  put  him  down,  he  ran  away  to  the  wings.  A lady  threw 
a bunch  of  violets  up  at  him  as  he  went.  It  brushed  his  face. 
He  was  panic-stricken  and  ran  as  fast  as  he  could,  turning 
over  a chair  that  was  in  his  way.  The  faster  he  ran  the  more 
they  laughed,  and  the  more  they  laughed  the  faster  he  ran. 

At  last  he  reached  the  exit,  which  was  filled  with  people 
looking  at  him.  He  forced  his  way  through,  butting,  and  ran 
and  hid  himself  at  the  back  of  the  anteroom.  His  grandfather  ' 
was  in  high  feather,  and  covered  him  with  blessings.  The  ' 


lusicians  of  the  orchestra  shouted  with  laughter,  and  con-  : 


^gratulated  the  boy,  who  refused  to  look  at  them  or  to  shake  * 
hands  with  them.  Melchior  listened  intently,  gaging  the  ap-  , 
plause,  which  had  not  yet  ceased,  and  wanted  to  take  Jean-  f 
Christophe  on  to  the  stage  again.  But  the  boy  refused  angrily,  ■ 
clung  to  his  grandfather’s  coat-tails,  and  kicked  at  everybody 
who  came  near  him.  At  last  he  burst  into  tears,  and  they  . 
had  to  let  him  be.  ; 

Just  at  this  moment  an  officer  came  to  say  that  the  Grand  { 
Duke  wished  the  artists  to  go  to  his  box.  How  could  the  child  j 
be  presented  in  such  a state?  Melchior  swore  angrily,  and  his  ' 
wrath  only  had  the  effect  of  making  Jean-Christophe’s  tears  | 
flow  faster.  To  stop  them,  his  grandfather  promised  him  a < 
pound  of  chocolates  if  he  would  not  cry  any  more,  and  Jean- 
Christophe,  who  was  greedy,  stopped  dead,  swallowed  down 
his  tears,  and  let  them  carry  him  off ; but  they  had  to  swear 
at  first  most  solemnly  that  they  would  not  take  him  on  to  ^ 
the  platform  again. 

In  the  anteroom  of  the  Grand  Ducal  box  he  was  presented 
to  a gentleman  in  a dress-coat,  with  a face  like  a pug-dog, 
bristling  mustaches,  and  a short,  pointed  beard — a little  red- 
faced  man,  inclined  to  stoutness,  who  addressed  him  with  ban- 

+.princr  Tiitti  IVfrwQv'f  f 


THE  DAWH 


101 


Grand  Duchess  and  her  daughter,  and  their  suite.  But  as  he 
did  not  dare  raise  his  eyes,  the  only  thing  he  could  remember 
of  this  brilliant  company  was  a series  of  gowns  and  uniforms 
from  the  waist  down  to  the  feet.  He  sat  on  the  lap  of  the 
voun'^  Princess,  and  dared  not  move  or  breathe.  She  asked 
him  Questions,  which  Melchior  answered  in  an  obsequious  Toice 
with  formal  replies,  respectful  and  servile;  but  she  did  not 
listen  to  Melchior,  and  went  on  teasing  the  child.  He  grew 
redder  and  redder,  and,  thinking  that  everybody  must  have 
noticed  it,  he  thought  he  must  explain  it  away  and  said  with 


a long  sigh: 

“ My  face  is  red.  I am  hot.”  . 

That  made  the  girl  shout  with  laughter.  But  Jean-Chris- 
tophe  did  not  mind  it  in  her,  as  he  had  in  his  audience  just 
before,  for  her  laughter  was  pleasant,  and  she  kissed  him,  and 

he  did  not  dislike  that.  , ,,  j f 

Then  he  saw  his  grandfather  in  the  passage  at  the  door  ot 
the  box,  beaming  and  bashful.  The  old  man  was  fain  to  show 
himself,  and  also  to  say  a few  words,  but  he  dared  not,  because 
no  one  had  spoken  to  him.  He  was  enjoying  his  grandson  s 
glory  at  a distance.  Jean-Christophe  became  tender,  and  telt 
an  irresistible  impulse  to  procure  justice  also  for  the  old  man,  / 
so  that  they  should  know  his  worth.  His  tongue  was  loosed, 
and  he  reached  up  to  the  ear  of  his  new  friend  and  whispered 


to  her: 

“ I will  tell  you  a secret.” 

She  laughed,  and  said  : 

“What?”  . 

“ You  know,”  he  went  on — “ you  know  the  pretty  tno  in  my 

minuetto,  the  minuetto  I played?  . . . You  know  it?  . . .” 
(He  hummed  it  gently.)  “.  . . Well,  grandfather  wrote  it,  not 
I.  All  the  other  airs  are  mine.  But  that  is  the  best.  Grand- 
father wrote  it.  Grandfather  did  not  want  me  to  say  anything. 
You  won’t  tell  anybody?  . . .”  (He  pointed  out  the  old  man.) 
“ That  is  my  grandfather.  I love  him ; he  is  very  kind  to  me. 

At  that  the  young  Princess  laughed  again,  said  that  he  was 
a darling,  covered  him  with  kisses,  and,  to  the  consternation 
of  Jean-Christophe  and  his  grandfather,  told  everybody. 
Everybody  laughed  then,  and  the  Grand  Duke  congratulated 


I 


• the  old  man,  who  was  covered  with  confusion,  tried  in  vain 
||  to  explain  himself,  and  stammered  like  a guilty  criminal.  But 

frj  Jean-Christophe  said  not  another  word  to  the  girl,  and  in 

|r  spite  of  her  wheedling  he  remained  dumb  and  stiff.  He  de- 
li spised  her  for  having  broken  her  promise.  His  idea  of  princes 

■ ' suffered  considerably  from  this  disloyalty.  He  was  so  angry 

I Y about  it  that  he  did  not  hear  anything  that  was  said,  or  that 
I the  Prince  had  appointed  him  laughingly  his  pianist  in  ordinary, 

‘ his  Hof  Musicus. 

He  went  out  with  his  relatives,  and  found  himself  surrounded 
in  the  corridors  of  the  theater,  and  even  in  the  street,  with 
, people  congratulating  him  or  kissing  him.  That  displeased 

. him  greatly,  for  he  did  not  like  being  kissed,  and  did  not 

jl'l  like  people  meddling  with  him  without  asking  his  permission, 

i/,';, , At  last  they  reached  home,  and  then  hardly' was  the  door  ' 

I"  closed  than  Melchior  began  to  call  him  a “ little  idiot  ” because  ; 

ij,  he  had  said  that  the  trio  was  not  his  own.  As  the  boy  was 

under  the  impression  that  he  had  done  a fine  thing,  which  ' 

; deserved  praise,  and  not  blame,  he  rebelled,  and  was  impertinent.  ' 

Melchior  lost  his  temper,  and  said  that  he  would  box  his  ears,  '■ 

ll|,!  although  he  had  played  his  music  well  enough,  because  with  ' 

:|;j;  his  idiocy  he  had  spoiled  the  whole  effect  of  the  concert.  Jean-  ] 

'jf  ’l  Christophe  had  a profound  sense  of  Justice.  He  went  and  ^ 

i ; . sulked  in  a corner ; he  visited  his  contempt  upon  his  father,  ^ 

il  the  Princess,  and  the  whole  world.  He  was  hurt  also  because  | 

1 : , the  neighbors  came  and  congratulated  his  parents  and  laughed  ! 

with  them,  as  if  it  were  they  who  had  played,  and  as  if  it  ] 
were  their  affair. 

At  this  moment  a servant  of  the  Court  came  with  a beautiful 
gold  watch  from  the  Grand  Duke  and  a box  of  lovely  sweets 
from  the  young  Princess.  Both  presents  gave  great  pleasure, 

■ ‘ to  Jean-Christophe,  and  he  did  not  know  which  gave  him  the 

;■  r ; more ; but  he  was  in  such  a bad  temper  that  he  would  not  admit 

' ! , it  to  himself,  and  he  went  on  sulking,  scowling  at  the  sweets, 

and  wondering  whether  he  could  properly  accept  a gift  from  a 
person  who  had  betrayed  his  confidence.  As  he  was  on  the 
point  of  giving  in  his  father  wanted  to  set  him  down  at  once 
I at  the  table,  and  make  him  write  at  his  dictation  a letter  of 

: thanks.  This  was  too  much.  Either  from  the  nervous  strain  ^ 


THE  DAWH 


103 


of  the  day,  or  from  instinctive  shame  at  beginning  the  letter, 
as  Melchior  wanted  him  to,  with  the  words,  “ The  little  servant 
and  musician — Knecht  und  Mmicus — of  Your  Highness  . . . 
he  burst  into  tears,  and  was  inconsolable.  The  servant  waited 
and  scoffed.  Melchior  had  to  write  the  letter.  That  did  not 
make  him  exactly  kindly  disposed  towards  Jean-Christophe.  As 
a crowning  misfortune,  the  boy  let  his  watch  fall  and  broke  it. 
A storm  of  reproaches  broke  upon  him.  Melchior  shouted  that 
he  would  have  to  go  without  dessert.  J ean-Christophe  said 
angrily  that  that  was  what  he  wanted.  To  punish  him,  Louisa 
said  that  she  would  begin  by  confiscating  his  sweets.  Jean- 
Christophe  was  up  in  arms  at  that,  and  said  that  the  box 
was  his,  and  no  one  else’s,  and  that  no  one  should  take  it  away 
from  him!  He  was  smacked,  and  in  a fit  of  anger  snatched 
the  box  from  his  mother’s  hands,  hurled  it  on  the  floor,  and 
stamped  on  it.  He  was  whipped,  taken  to  his  room,  undressed, 
and  put  to  bed. 

In  the  evening  he  heard  his  parents  dining  with  friends— 
a magnificent  repast^  prepared  a week  before  in  honor  of  the 
concert.  He  was  like  to  die  with  wrath  at  such  injustice.  They 
laughed  loudly,  and  touched  glasses.  They  had  told  the  guests 
that  the  boy  was  tired,  and  no  one  bothered  about  him.  Only 
after  dinner,  when  the  party  was  breaking  up,  he  heard  a slow,. 
shuffling  step  come  into  his  room,  and  old  Jean  Michel  bent 
over  his  bed  and  kissed  him,  and  said  *.  ^ Dear  little  Jean- 
Christophe  !...''  Then,  as  if  he  were  ashamed,  he  went  away 
without  another  word.  He  had  slipped  into  his  hand  some 
sweetmeats  which  he  had  hidden  in  his  pocket. 

That  softened  Jean-Christophe;  but  he  was  so  tired  with 
all  the  day’p.  emotions  that  he  had  not  the  strength  to  think 
about  what  his  grandfather  had  done.  He  had  not  even  the 
strength  to  reach  out  to  the  good  things  the  old  man  had  given 
him.  He  was  worn  out,  and  went  to  sleep  almost  at  once. 

His  sleep  was  light.  He  had  acute  nervous  attacks,  like 
electric  shocks,  which  shook  his  whole  body.  In  his  dreams 
he  was  haunted  by  wild  music.  He  awoke  in  the  night.  The 
Beethoven  overture  that  he  had  heard  at  the  concert  was  roaring 
in  his  ears.  It  filled  the  room  with  its  mighty  beat.  He  sat 
up  in  his  bed,  rubbed  his  eyes  and  ears,  and  asked  himself  if 


104  JEAN-CHRISTOPHE  • 


ihe  were  asleep.  No;  he  was  not  asleep.  He  recognized  the 
«ound,  he  recognized  those  roars  of  anger,  those  savage  cries; 
ihe  heard  the  throbbing  of  that  passionate  heart  leaping  in  his 
bosom,  that  tumult  of  the  blood;  he  felt  on  his  face  the  frantic 
heating  of  the  wind,  lashing  and  destroying,  then  stopping 
suddenly,  cut  off  by  an  Herculean  will.  That  Titanic  soul 
entered  his  body,  blew  out  his  limbs  and  his  soul,  and  seemed 
to  give  them  colossal  proportions.  He  strode  over  all  the 
world.  He  was  like  a mountain,  and  storms  raged  within  him 
— storms  of  wrath,  storms  of  sorrow!  . . . Ah,  what  sorrow! 

. . . But  they  were  nothing ! He  felt  so  strong ! ...  To  suffer 
- — ^still  to  suffer!  . . . Ah,  how  good  it  is  to  be  strong!  How 
good  it  is  to  suffer  when  a man  is  strong!  ... 

He  laughed.  His  laughter  rang  out  in  the  silence  of  the  ; 
uight.  His  father  woke  up  and  cried:  ; 

^^Who  is  there  j 

His  mother  whispered: 

Ssh ! the  boy  is  dreaming ! | 

All  then  were  silent ; round  them  all  was  silence.  The  music  \ 
died  away,  and  nothing  sounded  but  the  regular  breathing  of 
fhe  human  creatures  asleep  in  the  room,  comrades  in  misery, 
thrown  together  by  Fate  in  the  same  frail  barque,  bound  on-  . 
wards  by  a wild  whirling  force  through  the  night.  ; 

( Jean-Christophe’s  letter  to  the  Grand  Duke  Leopold  is  inspired  by  \ 
Beethoven’s  letter  to  the  Prince  Elector  of  Bonn,  written  when  he  was  ■ 
eleven.)  { 


MOENING 


I 


THE  DEATH  OF  JEAN  MICHEL 

Years  have  passed.  Jean-Christophe  is  nearly  eleven.  His 
musical  education  is  proceeding.  He  is  learning  harmony  with 
Florian  Holzer,  the  organist  of  St.  Martin's,  a friend  of  his 
grandfather's,  a very  learned  man,  who  teaches  him  that  the 
chords  and  series  of  chords  that  he  most  loves,  and  the  har- 
monies which  softly  greet  his  heart  and  ear,  those  that  he 
cannot  hear  without  a little  thrill  running  down  his  spine, 
are  bad  and  forbidden.  When  he  asks  why,  no  reply  is  forth- 
coming but  that  it  is  so;  the  rules  forbid  them.  As  he  is 
naturally  in  revolt  against  discipline,  he  loves  them  only  the 
more.  His  delight  is  to  find  examples  of  them  in  the  great 
and  admired  musicians,  and  to  take  them  to  his  grandfather  or 
his  master.  His  grandfather  replies  that  in  the  great  musicians 
they  are  admirable,  and  that  Beethoven  and  Bach  can  take  any 
liberty.  His  master,  less  conciliatory,  is  angry,  and  says  acidly 
that  the  masters  did  better  things. 

Jean-Christophe  has  a free  pass  for  the  concerts  and  the 
theater.  He  has  learned  to  play  every  instrument  a little. 
He  is  already  quite  skilful  with  the  violin,  and  his  father 
procured  him  a seat  in  the  orchestra.  He  acquitted  himself 
so  well  there  that  after  a few  months'  probation  he  was  officially 
appointed  second  violin  in  the  Hof  Musik  Verein.  He  has 
begun  to  earn  his  living.  Not  too  soon  either,  for  affairs  at 
home  have  gone  from  bad  to  worse.  Melchior's  intemperance 
has  swamped  him,  and  his  grandfather  is  growing  old. 

Jean-Christophe  has  taken  in  the  melancholy  situation.  He 
is  already  as  grave  and  anxious  as  a man.  He  fulfils  his  task 
valiantly,  though  it  does  not  interest  him,  and  he  is  apt  to 
fall  asleep  in  the  orchestra  in  the  evenings,  because  it  is  late 
and  he  is  tired.  The  theater  no  longer  rouses  in  him  the  emotion 
it  used  to  do  when  he  was  little.  When  he  was  little — four 

107 


108 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


years  ago — his  greatest  ambition  had  been  to  occupy  the  place 
that  he  now  holds. ' But  now  he  dislikes  most  of  the  music  he 
is  made  to  play.  He  dare  not  yet  pronounce  judgment  upon 
it,  but  he  does  find  it  foolish;  and  if  by  chance  they  do  play 
lovely  things,  he  is  displeased  by  the  carelessness  with  which 
they  are  rendered,  and  his  best-beloved  works  are  made  to 
appear  like  his  neighbors  and  colleagues  in  the  orchestra,  who, 
as  soon  as  the  curtain  has  fallen,  when  they  have  done  with 
blowing  and  scraping,  mop  their  brows  and  smile  and  chatter 
quietly,  as  though  they  had  just  finished  an  houPs  gymnastics. 
And  he  has  been  close  to  his  former  flame,  the  fair  barefooted 
singer.  He  meets  her  quite  often  during  the  entracte  in  the 
saloon.  She  knows  that  he  was  once  in  love  with  her,  and  she 
kisses  him  often.  That  gives  him  no  pleasure.  He  is  dis- 
gusted by  her  paint  and  scent  and  her  fat  arms  and  her  greedi- 
ness. He  hates  her  now. 

The  Grand  Duke  did  not  forget  his  pianist  in  ordinary. 
Not  that  the  small  pension  which  was  granted  to  him  with  this 
title  was  regularly  paid — it  had  to  be  asked  for — ^but  from  time 
to  time  Jean-Christophe  used  to  receive  orders  to  go  to  the 
Palace  when  there  were  distinguished  guests,  or  simply  when 
Their  Highnesses  took  it  into  their  heads  that  they  wanted  to 
hear  him.  It  was  almost  always  in  the  evening,  at  the  time 
when  Jean-Christophe  wanted  to  be  alone.  He  had  to  leave  j 
everything  and  hurry  off.  Sometimes  he  was  made  to  wait 
in  the  anteroom,  because  dinner  was  not  finished.  The  serv-  | 
ants,  accustomed  to  see  him,  used  to  address  him  familiarly. 
Then  he  would  be  led  into  a great  room  full  of  mirrors  and 
lights,  in  which  well-fed  men  and  women  used  to  stare  at  him 
with  horrid  curiosity.  He  had  to  cross  the  waxed  floor  to  kiss 
Their  Highnesses^  hand«,  and  the  more  he  grew  the  more  awk- 
ward he  became,  for  he  felt  that  he  was  in  a ridiculous  position, 
and  his  pride  used  to  suffer. 

When  it  was  all  done  he  used  to  sit  at  the  piano  and  have 
to  play  for  these  idiots.  He  thought  them  idiots.  There  were 
moments  when  their  indifference  so  oppressed  him  as  he  played 
that  he  was  often  on  the  point  of  stopping  in  the  middle  of  a 
piece.  There  was  no  air  about  him;  he  was  near  suffocation, 
seemed  losing  his  senses.  When  he  finished  he  was  overwhelmed 


MOENING 


109 


with  congratulations  and  laden  with  compliments ; he  was  intro- 
duced all  round.  He  thought  they  looked  at  him  like  some 
strange  animal  in  the  Prince’s  menagerie,  and  that  the  words 
of  praise  were  addressed  rather  to  his  master  than  to  himself. 
He  thought  himself  brought  low,  and  he  developed  a morbid 
sensibility  from  which  he  suffered  the  more  as  he  dared  not 
show  it.  He  saw  offense  in  the  most  simple  actions.  If  any 
one  laughed  in  a corner  of  the  room,  he  imagined  himself  to 
be  the  cause  of  it,  and  he  knew  not  whether  it  were  his  manners, 
or  his  clothes,  or  his  person,  or  his  hands,  or  his  feet,  that 
caused  the  laughter.  He  was  humiliated  by  everything.  He 
was  humiliated  if  people  did  not  talk  to  him,  humiliated  if  they 
did,  humiliated  if  they  gave  him  sweets  like  a child,  humiliated 
especially  when  the  Grand  Duke,  as  sometimes  happened,  in 
princely  fashion  dismissed  him  by  pressing  a piece  of  money 
into  his  hand.  He  was  wretched  at  being  poor  and  at  being 
treated  as  a poor  boy.  One  evening,  as  he  was  going  home, 
the  money  that  he  had  received  weighed  so  heavily  upon  him 
that  he  threw  it  through  a cellar  window,  and  then  immediately 
he  would  have  done  anything  to  get  it  back,  for  at  home  there 
was  a month’s  old  account  with  the  butcher  to  pay. 

His  relatives  never  suspected  - these  injuries  to  his  pride. 
They  were  delighted  at  his  favor  with  the  Prince.  Poor  Louisa 
could  conceive  of  nothing  finer  for  her  son  than  these  evenings 
at  the  Palace  in  splendid  society.  As  for  Melchior,  he  used 
to  brag  of  it  continually  to  his  boon-fellows.  But  Jean-Chris- 
tophe’s  grandfather  was  happier  than  any.  He  pretended  to 
be  independent  and  democratic,  and  to  despise  greatness,  but 
he  had  a simple  admiration  for  money,  power,  honors,  social 
distinction,  and  he  took  unbounded  pride  in  seeing  his  grandson 
moving  among  those  who  had  these  things.  He  delighted  in 
them  as  though  such  glory  was  a refiection  upon  himself,  and 
in  spite  of  all  his  efforts  to  appear  calm  and  indifferent,  his 
face  used  to  glow.  On  the  evenings  when  Jean-Christophe  went 
to  the  Palace,  old  Jean  Michel  used  always  to  contrive  to  stay 
about  the  house  on  some  pretext  or  another.  He  used  to  await 
his  grandson’s  return  with  childish  impatience,  and  when  Jean- 
Christophe  came  in  he  would  begin  at  once  with  a careless  air 
to  ply  him  with  seeming  idle  questions,  such  as: 


110 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


/ 


“ Well,  did  things  go  well  to-night  ? ” 

Or  he  would  make  little  hints  like : 

“ Here’s  our  Jean-Christophe;  he  can  tell  us  some  news.” 

Or  he  would  produce  some  ingenious  compliment  by  way  of 
flattery : 

“ Here’s  our  young  nobleman ! ” 

But  Jean-Christophe,  out  of  sorts  and  out  of  temper,  would 
reply  with  a curt  “ Good-evening ! ” and  go  and  sulk  in  a corner. 
But  the  old  man  would  persist,  and  ply  him  with  more  direct 
questions,  to  which  the  boy  replied  only  “ Yes,”  or  “ No.”  Then 
the  others  would  join  in  and  ask  for  details.  Jean-Christophe 
would  look  more  and  more  thunderous.  They  had  to  drag 
the  words  from  his  lips  until  Jean  Michel  would  lose  his  temper 
and  hurl  insults  at  him.  Then  Jean-Christophe  would  reply 
with  scant  respect,  and  the  end  would  be  a rumpus.  The  old  ; 
man  would  go  out  and  slam  the  door.  So  Jean-Christophe  ^ 
spoiled  the  joy  of  these  poor  people,  who  had  no  inkling  of  the  ‘ 
cause  of  his  bad  temper.  It  was  not  their  fault  if  they  had  the  i 
souls  of  servants,  and  never  dreamed  that  it  is  possible  to  be  | 
otherwise. 

Jean-Christophe  was  turned  into  himself,  and  though  he  never  : 
judged  his  family,  yet  he  felt  a gulf  between  himself  and  them.  : 
No  doubt  he  exaggerated  what  lay  between  them,  and  in  spite  ' 
of  their  different  ways  of  thought  it  is  quite  probable  that  they  ^ 
could  have  understood  each  other  if  he  had  been  able  to  talk  < 
intimately  to  them.  ^B^t  it  is  known  that  nothing  is  more  ’ 
difficult  than  absolute  intimacy  between  children  and  parents^ 
even  when  there  is  much  love  between  them,  for  on  the  one 
side  respect  discourages  confidence,  and  on  the  other  the  idea, 
often  erroneous,  of  the  superiority  of  age  and  experience  pre- 
vents them  taking  seriously  enough  the  child’s  feelings,  which 
are  often  just  as  interesting  as  those  of  grown-up  persons,  and 
almost  always  more  sincere. 

But  the  people  that  Jean-Christophe  saw  at  home  and  the 
conversation  that  he  heard  there  widened  the  distance  between 
himself  and  his  family. 

Melchior’s  friends  used  to  frequent  the  house — mostly  musi- 
cians of  the  orchestra,  single  men  and  hard  drinkers.  They 
were  not  bad  fellows,  but  vulgar.  They  made  the  house  shake 


MOKNING 


with  their  footsteps  and  their  laughter.  They  loved 
they  spoke  of  it  with  a stupidity  that  was  revolting, 
indiscretion  of  their  enthusiasm  wounded  the  boy’s  modesty 
feeling.  When  they  praised  a work  that  he  loved  it  was 
though  they  were  insulting  him  personally.  He  would  stiffen 
himself  and  grow  pale,  frozen,  and  pretend  not  to  take  any 
interest  in  music.  He  would  have  hated  it  had  that  been 
possible.  Melchior  used  to  say : 

“ The  fellow  has  no  heart.  He  feels  nothing.  I don’t  know 
where  he  gets  it  from.” 

Sometimes  they  used  to  sing  German  four-part  songs — four- 
footed  as  well — and  these  were  all  exactly  like  themselves — slow- 
moving,  solemn  and  broad,  fashioned  of  dull  melodies.  Then 
Jean-Christophe  used  to  fly  to  the  most  distant  room  and  hurl 
insults  at  the  wall. 

His  grandfather  also  had  friends:  the  organist,  the  furniture- 
dealer,  the  watch-maker,  the  contra-bass — ^garrulous  old  men, 
who  used  always  to  pass  round  the  same  jokes  and  plunge  into 
interminable  discussions  on  art,  politics,  or  the  family  trees  of 
the  country-side,  much  less  interested  in  the  subjects  of  which 
they  talked  than  happy  to  talk  and  to  And  an  audience. 

As  for  Louisa,  she  used  only  to  see  some  of  her  neighbors 
who  brought  her  the  gossip  of  the  place,  and  at  rare  intervals 
a “ kind  lady,”  who,  under  pretext  of  taking  an  interest  in  her, 
used  to  come  and  engage  her  services  for  a dinner-party,  and 
pretend  to  watch  over  the  religious  education  of  the  children. 

But  of  all  who  came  to  the  house,  none  was  more  repugnant 
to  Jean-Christophe  than  his  Uncle  Theodore,  a stepson  of  his 
grandfather’s,  a son  by  a former  marriage  of  his  grandmother 
Clara,  Jean  Michel’s  flrst  wife.  He  was  a partner  in  a great 
commercial  house  which  did  business  in  Africa  and  the  Far 
East.  He  was  the  exact  type  of  one  of  those  Germans  of  the 
new  style,  whose  affectation  it  is  scoffingly  to  repudiate  the  old 
idealism  of  the  race,  and,  intoxicated  by  conquest,  to  maintain 
a cult  of  strength  and  success  which  shows  that  they  are  not 
accustomed  to  seeing  them  on  their  side.  But  as  it  is  difficult 
at  once  to  change  the  age-old  nature  of  a people,  the  despised 
idealism  sprang  up  again  in  him  at  every  turn  in  language, 
manners,  and  moral  habits  and  the  quotations  from  Goethe  to 


JEAN-CHKISTOPHE 


.Smallest  incidents  of  domestic  life,  for  he  was  a singular 
ound  of  conscience  and  self-interest.  There  was  in  him  a 
‘urious  effort  to  reconcile  the  honest  principles  of  the  old 
German  bourgeoisie  with  the  cynicism  of  these  new  commercial 
condottieri — a compound  which  forever  gave  out  a repulsive 
flavor  of  hypocrisy,  forever  striving  to  make  of  German  strength, 
avarice,  and  self-interest  the  symbols  of  all  right,  justice,  and 
truth. 

Jean-Christophe’s  loyalty  was  deeply  injured  by  all  this.  He 
could  not  tell  whether  his  uncle  were  right  or  no,  but  he  hated 
him,  and  marked  him  down  for  an  enemy.  His  grandfather 
had  no  great  love  for  him  either,  and  was  in  revolt  against  his 
theories;  but  he  was  easily  crushed  in  argument  by  Theodore’s 
fluency,  which  was  never  hard  put  to  it  to  turn  into  ridicule 
the  old  man’s  simple  generosity.  In  the  end  Jean  Michel  came  • 
to  be  ashamed  of  his  own  good-heartedness,  and  by  way  of 
showing  that  he  was  not  so  much  behind  the  times  as  they! 
thought,  he  used  to  try  to  talk  like  Theodore;  but  the  words, 
came  hollow  from  his  lips,  and  he  was  ill  at  ease  with  them.i 
Whatever  he  may  have  thought  of  him,  Theodore  did  impress 
him.  He  felt  respect  for  such  practical  skill,  which  he  admired 
the  more  for  knowing  himself  to  be  absolutely  incapable  of  it. 
He  used  to  dream  of  putting  one  of  his  grandsons  to  similar 
work.  That  was  Melchior’s  idea  also.  He  intended  to  make; 
Eodolphe  follow  in  his  uncle’s  footsteps.  And  so  the  whole* 
family  set  itself  to  flatter  this  rich  relation  of  whom  they  ex-'! 
pected  help.  He,  seeing  that  he  was  necessary  to  them,  took' 
advantage  of  it  to  cut  a fine  masterful  figure.  He  meddled  in 
everything,  gave  advice  upon  everything,  and  made  no  attempt 
to  conceal  his  contempt  for  art  and  artists.  Rather,  he  blazoned 
it  abroad  for  the  mere  pleasure  of  humiliating  his  musicianly 
relations,  and  he  used  to  indulge  in  stupid  jokes  at  their  ex- 
pense, and  the  cowards  used  to  laugh. 

Jean-Christophe,  especially,  was  singled  out  as  a butt  for  his 
uncle’s  jests.  He  was  not  patient  under  them.  He  would  say 
nothing,  but  he  used  to  grind  his  teeth  angrily,  and  his  uncle 
used  to  laugh  at  his  speechless  rage.  But  one  day,  when  Theo- 
dore went  too  far  in  his  teasing,  Jean-Christophe,  losing  control 
of  himself,  spat  in  his  face.  It  was  a fearful  affair.  The  insult 


MOENING 


113 


sras  so  monstrous  that  his  uncle  was  at  first  paralyzed  by  it; 
then  words  came  back  to  him,  and  he  broke  out  into  a flood 
jf  abuse.  Jean-Christophe  sat  petrified  by  the  enormity  of 
the  thing  that  he  had  done,  and  did  not  even  feel  the  blows  that 
rained  down  upon  him;  but  when  they  tried  to  force  him  down 
an  his  knees  before  his  uncle,  he  broke  away,  jostled  his  mother 
aside,  and  ran  out  of  the  house.  He  did  not  stop  until  he  could 
breathe  no  more,  and  then  he  was  right  out  in  the  country. 
He  heard  voices  calling  him,  and  he  debated  within  himself 
whether  he  had  not  better  throw  himself  into  the  river,  since 
he  could  not  do  so  with  his  enemy.  He  spent  the  night  in 
the  fields.  At  dawn  he  went  and  knocked  at  his  grandfather ^s 
door.  The  old  man  had  been  so  upset  by  Jean-Christophe’s 
disappearance — ^he  had  not  slept  for  it  that  he  had  not  the 
heart  to  scold  him.  He  took  him  home,  and  then  nothing  was 
said  to  him,  because  it  was  apparent  that  he  was  still  in  an 
excited  condition,  and  they  had  to  smooth  him  down,  for  he 
had  to  play  at  the  Palace  that  evening.  But  for  several  weeks 
Melchior  continued  to  overwhelm  him  with  his  complaints, 
addressed  to  nobody  in  particular,  about  the  trouble  that  a man 
takes  to  give  an  example  of  an  irreproachable  life  and  good 
manners  to  unworthy  creatures  who  dishonor  him.  And  when 
his  Uncle  Theodore  met  him  in  the  street,  he  turned  his  head 
and  held  his  nose  by  way  of  showing  his  extreme^  disgust. 

Finding  so  little  sympathy  at  home,  Jean-Christophe  spent 
as  little  time  there  as  possible.  He  chafed  against  the  continual 
restraint  which  they  strove  to  set  upon  him.  There  were  too 
many  things,  too  many  people,  that  he  had  to  respect,  and  he 
was  never  allowed  to  ask  why,  and  Jean-Christophe  did  not 
possess  the  bump  of  respect.  The  more  they  tried  to  discipline 
him  and  to  turn  him  into  an  honest  little  German  bourgeois, 
the  more  he  felt  the  need  of  breaking  free  from  it  all.  It  would 
have  been  his  pleasure  after  the  dull,  tedious,  formal  perform- 
ances which  he  had  to  attend  in  the  orchestra  or  at  the  Palace 
to  roll  in  the  grass  like  a fowl,  aud  to  slide  down  the  grassy 
slope  on  the  seat  of  his  new  trousers,  or  to  have  a stone-fight 
with  the  urchins  of  the  neighborhood.  It  was  not  because  he 
was  afraid  of  scoldings  and  thwackings  that  he  did  not  do 
these  things  more  often,  but  because  he  had  no  playmates.  He 


114 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


/ 


could  not  get  on  with  other  children.  Even  the  little  gutter- 
snipes did  not  like  playing  with  him,  because  he  took  every 
game  too  seriously,  and  struck  too  lustily.  He  had  grown  used 
to  being  driven  in  on  himself,  and  to  living  apart  from  children 
of  his  own  age.  He  was  ashamed  of  not  being  clever  at  games^ 
and  dared  not  take  part  in  their  sport.  And  he  used  to  pretend 
to  take  no  interest  in  it,  although  he  was  consumed  by  the 
desire  to  be  asked  to  play  with  them.  But  they  never  said 
anything  to  him,  and  then  he  would  go  away  hurt,  but  assum- 
ing  indifference. 

He  found  consolation  in  wandering  with  Uncle  Gottfried 
when  he  was  in  the  neighborhood.  He  became  more  and  more 
friendly  with  him,  and  sympathized  with  his  independent  tern-  , 
per.  He  understood  so  well  now  Gottfried’s  delight  in  tramping 
the  roads  without  a tie  in  the  world ! Often  they  used  to  1 
go  out  together  in  the  evening  into  the  country,  straight  on,  j 
aimlessly,  and  as  Gottfried  always  forgot  the  time,  they  used  to 
come  back  very  late,  and  then  were  scolded.  Gottfried  knew  ' 
that  it  was  wrong,  but  Jean-Christophe  used  to  implore,  and  , 
he  could  not  himself  resist  the  pleasure  of  it.  About  midnight  • 
he  would  stand  in  front  of  the  house  and  whistle,  an  agreed  ’ 
signal.  Jean-Christophe  would  be  in  his  bed  fully  dressed.  ; 
He  would  slip  out  with  his  shoes  in  his  hand,  and,  holding  his  ; 
breath,  creep  with  all  the  artful  skill  of  a savage  to  the  kitchen  | 
window,  which  opened  on  to  the  road.  He  would  climb  on  to  | 
the  table;  Gottfried  would  take  him  on  his  shoulders,  and  then  • 
off  they  would  go,  happy  as  truants.  ! 

Sometimes  they  would  go  and  seek  out  Jeremy  the  fisherman, 
a friend  of  Gottfried’s,  and  then  they  would  slip  out  in  his 
boat  under  the  moon.  The  water  dropping  from  the  oars  gave 
out  little  arpeggios,  then  chromatic  scales.  A milky  vapor  hung 
tremulous  over  the  surface  of  the  waters.  The  stars  quivered. 
The  cocks  called  to  each  other  from  either  bank,  and  some- 
times in  the  depths  of  the  sky  they  heard  the  trilling  of  larks, 
ascending  from  earth,  deceived  by  the  light  of  the  moon.  They 
were  silent.  Gottfried  hummed  a tune.  Jeremy  told  strange, 
tales  of  the  lives  of  the  beasts — tales  that  gained  in  mystery 
from  the  curt  and  enigmatic  manner  of  their  telling.  The  moon 
hid  herself  behind  the  woods.  They  skirted  the  black  mass 


MOENING 


115 


of  the  hills.  The  darkness  of  the  water  and  the  sky  mingled. 
There  was  never  a ripple  on  the  water.  Sounds  died  down. 
The  boat  glided  through  the  night.  Was  she  gliding?  Was 
she  moving?  Was  she  still?  . . . The  reeds  parted  with  a 
sound  like  the  rustling  of  silk.  The  boat  grounded  noiselessly. 
They  climbed  out  on  to  the  bank,  and  returned  on  foot.  They 
would  not  return  until  dawn.  They  followed  the  river-bank. 
Clouds  of  silver  ablets,  green  as  ears  of  corn,  or  blue  as  jewels, 
teemed  in  the  first  light  of  day.  They  swarmed  like  the  ser- 
pents of  Medusa’s  head,  and  fiung  themselves  greedily  at  the 
bread  thrown  to  them;  they  plunged  for  it  as  it  sank,  and 
turned  in  spirals,  and  then  darted  away  in  a fiash,  like  a ray 
of  light.  The  river  took  on  rosy  and  purple  hues  of  refiection. 
The  birds  woke  one  after  another.  The  truants  hurried  back. 
Just  as  carefully  as  when  they  had  set  out,  they  returned  to  the 
room,  with  its  thick  atmosphere,  and  Jean-Christophe,  worn  out, 
fell  into  bed,  and  slept  at  once,  with  his  body  sweet-smelling  with 
the  smell  of  the  fields. 

All  was  well,  and  nothing  would  have  been  known,  but  that 
one  day  Ernest,  his  younger  brother,  betrayed  Jean-Christophe’s 
midnight  sallies.  From  that  moment  they  were  forbidden,  and 
he  was  watched.  But  he  contrived  to  escape,  and  he  preferred 
the  society  of  the  little  peddler  and  his  friends  to  any  other. 
His  family  was  scandalized.  Melchior  said  that  he  had  the 
tastes  of  a laborer.  Old  Jean  Michel  was  jealous  of  Jean- 
Christophe’s  affection  for  Gottfried,  and  used  to ' lecture  him 
about  lowering  himself  so  far  as  to  like  such  vulgar  company 
when  he  had  the  honor  of  mixing  with  the  best  people  and  of 
being  the  servant  of  princes.  It  was  considered  that  Jean- 
Christophe  was  lacking  in  dignity  and  self-respect. 

In  spite  of  the  penury  which  increased  wnth  Melchior’s  in- 
temperance and  folly,  life  was  tolerable  as  long  as  Jean  Michel 
was  there.  He  was  the  only  creature  who  had  any  infiuence 
over  Melchior,  and  who  could  hold  him  back  to  a certain  extent 
from  his  vice.  The  esteem  in  which  he  was  generally  held  did 
serve  to  pass  over  the  drunkard’s  freaks,  and  he  used  constantly 
to  come  to  the  aid  of  the  household  with  money.  Besides  the 
modest  pension  which  he  enjoyed  as  retired  Kapellmeister,  he 
was  still  able  to  earn  small  sums  by  giving  lessons  and  tuning 


116 


JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 


pianos.  He  gave  most  of  it  to  his  daughter-in-law,  for  he 
perceived  her  difficulties,  though  she  strove  to  hide  them  from 
him.  Louisa  hated  the  idea  that  he  was  denying  himself  for 
them,  and  it  was  all  the  more  to  the  old  man’s  credit  in  that  he 
had  always  been  accustomed  to  a latge  way  of  living  and  had 
great  needs  to  satisfy.  Sometimes  even  his  ordinary  sacrifices 
were  not  sufficient,  and  to  meet  some  urgent  debt  Jean  Michel 
would  have  secretly  to  sell  a piece  of  furniture  or  books,  or  some 
relic  that  he  set  store  by.  Melchior  knew  that  his  father  made 
presents  to  Louisa  that  were  concealed  from  himself,  and  very 
often  he  would  lay  hands  on  them,  in  spite  of  protest.  But 
when  this  came  to  the  old  man’s  ears — ^not  from  Louisa,  who 
said  nothing  of  her  troubles  to  him,  but  from  one  of  his  grand- 
children— he  would  fly  into  a terrible  passion,  and  there  were 
frightful  scenes  between  the  two  men.  They  were  both  extraor- 
dinarily violent,  and  they  would  come  to  round  oaths  and 
threats — almost  it  seemed  as  though  they  would  come  to  blows. 
But  even  in  his  most  angry  passion  respect  would  hold  Melchior 
in  check,  and,  however  drunk  he  might  be,  in  the  end  he  would 
bow  his  head  to  the  torrent  of  insults  and  humiliating  reproach 
which  his  father  poured  out  upon  him.  But  for  that  he  did 
not  cease  to  watch  for  the  first  opportunity  of  breaking  out 
again,  and  with  his  thoughts  on  the  future,  Jean  Michel  would 
be  filled  with  melancholy  and  anxious  fears. 

“ My  poor  children,”  he  used  to  say  to  Louisa,  ‘‘  what  will 
become  of  you  when  I am  no  longer  here?  . . . Fortunately,” 
he  would  add,  fondling  J ean-Christophe,  “ I can  go  on  until 
this  fellow  pulls  you  out  of  the  mire.”  But  he  was  out  in  his 
reckoning;  he  was  at  the  end  of  his  road.  No  one  would 
have  suspected  it.  He  was  surprisingly  strong.  He  was  past 
eighty;  he  had  a full  head  of  hair,  a white  mane,  still  gray 
in  patches,  and  in  his  thick  beard  were  still  black  hairs.  He 
had  only  about  ten  teeth  left,  but  with  these  he  could  chew 
lustily.  It  was  a pleasure  to  see  him  at  table.  | He  had  a hearty 
appetite,  and  though  he  reproached  Melchior  for  drinking,  he 
always  emptied  his  bottle  himself.  He  had  a preference  for 
white  Moselle.  For  the  rest — wine,  beer,  eider — ^he  could  do 
justice  to  all  the  good  things  that  the  Lord  hath  made.  He 
was  not  so  foolish  as  to  lose  his  reason  in  his  cups,  and  he 


MOENING 


117- 

kept  to  his  allowance.  It  is  true  that  it  was  a plentiful  allow- 
ance, and  that  a feebler  intelligence  must  have  been  made  drunk 
by  it.  He  was  strong  of  f#ot  and  eye,  and  indefatigably  active. 
He  got  up  at  six,  and  performed  his  ablutions  scrupulously, 
for  he  cared  for  his  appearance  and  respected  his  person.  He 
lived  alone  in  his  house,  of  which  he  was  sole  occupant,  and 
never  let  his  daughter-in-law  meddle  with  his  affairs.  He 
cleaned  out  his  room,  made  his  own  coffee,  sewed  on  his  buttons, 
nailed,  and  glued,  and  altered;  and  going  to  and  fro  and  up 
and  down  stairs  in  his  shirt-sleeves,  he  never  stopped  singing 
in  a sounding  bass  which  he  loved  to  let  ring  out  as  he  accom- 
panied himself  with  operatic  gestures.  And  then  he  used  to 
go  out  in  all  weathers.  He  went  about  his  business,  omitting 
none,  but  he  was  not  often  punctual.  He  was  to  be  seen  at 
every  street  corner  arguing  with  some  acquaintance  or  joking 
with  some  woman  whose  face  he  had  remembered,  for  he  loved 
pretty  women  and  old  friends.  And  so  he  was  always  late, 
and  never  knew  the  time.  But  he  never  let  the  dinner-hour 
slip  by.  He  dined  wherever  he  might  be,  inviting  himself,  and 
he  would  not  go  home  until  late — after  nightfall,  after  a visit 
to  his  grandchildren.  Then  he  would  go  to  bed,  and  before 
he  went  to  sleep  read  a page  of  his  old  Bible,  and  during  the 
night — for  he  never  slept  for  more  than  an  hour  or  two  to- 
gether— he  would  get  up  to  take  down  one  of  his  old  books, 
bought  second-hand — ^history,  theology,  belles-lettres,  or  science. 
He  used  to  read  at  random  a few  pages,  which  interested  and 
bored  him,  and  he  did  not  rightly  understand  them,  though  he 
did  not  skip  a word,  until  sleep  came  to  him  again.  On  Sunday 
he  would  go  to  church,  walk  with  the  children,  and  play  bowls. 
He  had  never  been  ill,  except  for  a little  ^out  in  his  toes,  which 
used  tojoake  Iiim^  s;^a^^^^  ]ie  was  reading  his 

^BiblSr^  It  seemed  as  though  he  migTifliveTb  he  a hundred, 
and  he  himself  could  see  no  reason  why  he  should  not  live 
longer.  When  people  said  that  he  would  die  a centenarian,  he 
used  to  think,  like  another  illustrious  old  man,  that  no  limit 
can  be  appointed  to  the  goodness  of  Providence.  The  only  sign 
that  he  was  growing  old  was  that  he  was  more  easily  brought 
to  tears,  and  was  becoming  every  day  more  irritable.  The 
smallest  impatience  with  him  could  throw  him  into  a violent 


118  JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 

fury.  His  red  face  and  short  neck  would  grow  redder  than 
ever.  He  would  stutter  angrily,  and  have  to -stop,  choking. 
The  family  doctor,  an  old  friend,  had  M^arned  him  to  take  care 
and  to  moderate  both  his  anger  and  his  appetite.  But  with 
an  old  man’s  obstinacy  he  plunged  into  acts  of  still  greater 
recklessness  out  of  bravado,  and  he  laughed  at  medicine  and 
doctors.  He  pretended  to  despise  death,  and  did  not  mince 
his  language  when  he  declared  that  he  was  not  afraid  of  it. 

One  summer  day,  when  it  was  very  hot,  and  he  had  drunk 
copiously,  and  argued  in  the  market-place,  he  went  home  and 
began  to  work  quietly  in  his  garden.  He  loved  digging.  Bare- 
headed under  the  sun,  still  irritated  by  his  argument,  he  dug 
angrily.  Jean-Christophe  was  sitting  in  the  arbor  with  a book 
in  his  hand,  but  he  was  not  reading.  He  was  dreaming  and 
listening  to  the  cheeping  of  the  crickets,  and  mechanically  fol-, 
lowing  his  grandfather’s  movements.  The  old  man’s  back  was 
towards  him;  he  was  bending  and  plucking  out  weeds.  Sud-^ 
denly  Jean-Christophe  saw  him  rise,  beat  against  the  air  with, 
his  arms,  and  fall  heavily  with  his  face  to  the  ground.  For 
a moment  he  wanted  to  laugh;  then  he  saw  that  the  old  man- 
did  not  stir.  He  called  to  him,  ran  to  him,  and  shook  himj 
with  all  his  strength.  Fear  seized  him.  He  knelt,  and  withj 
his  two  hands  tried  to  raise  the  great  head  from  the  ground.  | 
It  was  so  heavy  and  he  trembled  so  that  he  could  hardly  move 
it.  But  when  he  saw  the  eyes  turned  up,  white  and  bloody,^ 
he  was  frozen  with  horror  and,  with  a shrill  cry,  let  the  headjj 
fall.  He  got  up  in  terror,  ran  away  and  out  of  the  place.{| 
He  cried  and  wept.  A man  passing  by  stopped  the  boy.  Jean-jj 
Christophe  could  not  speak,  but  he  pointed  to  the  house.j 
The  man  went  in,  and  Jean-Christophe’  followed  him.  Others 
had  heard  his  cries,  and  they  came  from  the  neighboring  houses. 
Soon  the  garden  was  full  of  people.  They  trampled  the  flowers, 
and  bent  down  over  the  old  man.  They  cried  aloud.  Two 
or  three  men  lifted  him  up.  Jean-Christophe  stayed  by  the 
gate,  turned  to  the  wall,  and  hid  his  face  in  his  hands.  He 
was  afraid  to  look,  but  he  could  not  help  himself,  and  when 
they  passed  him  he  saw  through  his  Angers  the  old  man’s  huge 
body,  limp  and  flabby.  One  arm  dragged  along  the  ground, 
the  head,  leaning  against  the  knee  of  one  of  the  men  carrying 


tJlG  DOdy,  DODOea  ai  every  step,  ana  me  xaee  >vao  oeaiieu.,  enveicn 

with  mud,  bleeding.  The  mouth  was  open  and  the  eyes  were 
fearful.  He  howled  again,  and  took  to  flight.  He  ran^as 
though  something  were  after  him,  and  never  stopped  until  ne 
reached  home.  He  burst  into  the  kitchen  with  frightful  cries. 
Louisa  was  cleaning  vegetables.  He  hurled  himself  at  her,> 
and  hugged  her  desperately,  imploring  her  help.  His  face  was 
distorted  with  his  sobs;  he  could  hardly  speak.  But  at  the 
first  word  she  understood.  She  went  white,  let  the  things  fall 
from  her  hands,  and  without  a word  rushed  from  the  house. 

Jean-Christophe  was  left  alone,  crouching  against  a cupboard. 
He  went  on  weeping.  His  brothers  were  playing.  He  could 
not  make  out  quite  what  had  happened.  He  did  not  think 
of  his  grandfather;  he  was  thinking  only  of  the  dreadful  sights 
he  had  just  seen,  and  he  was  in  terror  lest  I made 

to  return  to  see  them  again. 

And  as  it  turned  out  in  the  evening,  when  \j  uxx’ij-i. 
tired  of  doing  every  sort  of  mischief  in  the  house,  were 
ning  to  feel  wearied  and  hungry,  Louisa  rushed  in  agair 
them  by  the  hand,  and  led  them  to  their  grandfather’s 
She  walked  very  fast,  and  Ernest  and  Eodolphe  tried  to 
plain,  as  usual;  but  Louisa  bade  them  be  silent  in  such  i 
of  voice  that  they  held  their  peace.  An  instinctive  fear 
them,  and  when  they  entered  the  house  they  began  to 
It  was  not  yet  night.  The  last  hours  of  the  sunset  cast  strah 
lights  over  the  inside  of  the  house — on  the  door-handle,  on 
the  mirror,  on  the  violin  hung  on  the  wall  in  the  chief  room, 
which  was  half  in  darkness.  But  in  the  old  man’s  room  a candl 
was  alight,  and  the  flickering  flame,  vying  with  the  livid,  dyin 
day,  made  the  heavy  darkness  of  the  room  more  r 
Melchior  was  sitting  near  the  window,  loudly  weeping 
doctor,  leaning  over  the  bed,  hid  from  sight  what  was  lyi^.^ 
there.  Jean-Christophe’s  heart  beat  so  that  it  was  like  to  break. 
Louisa  made  the  children  kneel  at  the  foot  of  the  bed.  Jean- 
Christophe  stole  a glance.  He  expected  something  so  terrifying 
after  what  he  had  seen  in  the  afternoon  that  at  the  first  glimpse 
he  was  almost  comforted.  His  grandfather  lay  motionless, 
and  seemed  to  be  asleen.  For  a moment  the  ebild  believed  that 


120  JEAN^CHEISTOFHE 

he  heard  his  heavy  breathing;  when,  as  he  looked  cio&er,  he 
saw  the  swollen  face,  on  which  the  wound  that  he  had  come 
by  in  the  fall  had  made  a broad  scar;  when  he  understood  that 
hlf e was  a man  at  point  of  death,  he  began  to  tremble ; and 
while  he  Tepeated  Louisa’s  prayer  for  the  restoration  of  his 
grandfather,  in  his  heart  he  prayed  that  if  the  old  man  could 
not  get  well  he  might  be  already  dead.  He  was  terrified  at  the 
prospect  of  what  was  going  to  happen. 

The  old  man  had  not  been  conscious  since  the  moment  of 
his  fall.  H’e  only  returned  to  consciousness  for  a moment, 
enough  to  learn  his  condition,  and  that  was  lamentable.  The 
priest  was  there,  and  recited  the  last  prayers  over  him.  They 
raised  the  old  man  on  his  pillow.  He  opened  his  eyes  slowly, 
and  they  seemed  no  longer  to  obey  his  will.  He  breathed  noisily, 
and  with  unseeing  eyes  looked  at  the  faces  and  the  lights,  and 
suddenly  he  opened  his  mouth.  A nameless  terror  showed  on 
^fpf^tures. 

fit  then  . . he  gasped — but  I am  going  to  die ! ” 

I awful  sound  of  his  voice  pierced  Jean-Christophe’s  heart. 

, never  was  it  to  fade  from  his  memory.  The  old  man 
lo  more.  He  moaned  like  a little  child.  The  stupor  took 
[nee  more,  but  his  breathing  became  more  and  more  diffi- 
He  groaned,  he  fidgeted  with  his  hands,  he  seemed  to 
against  the  mortal  sleep.  In  his  semi-consciousness  he 
once: 

Mother ! ” 

Oh,  the  biting  impression  that  it  made,  this  mumbling  of 
e old  man,  calling  in  anguish  on  his  mother,  as  Jean-Chris- 
would  himself  have  done — ^his  mother,  of  whom  he  was 
er  known  to  talk  in  life,  to  whom  he  now  turned  instinc- 
tively, the  last  futile  refuge  in  the  last  terror ! . . . Then  he 
seemed  to  be  comforted  for  a moment.  He  had  once  more  a 
flicker  of  consciousness.  His  heavy  eyes,  the  pupils  of  which 
seemed  to  move  aimlessly,  met  those  of  the  boy  frozen  in  his 
fear.  They  lit  up.  The  old  man  tried  to  smile  and  speak. 
Louisa  took  Jean-Christophe  and  led  him  to  the  bedside.  Jean 
Michel  moved  his  lips,  and  tried  to  caress  his  head  with  his 
hand,  but  then  he  fell  back  into  his  torpor.  It  was  the  end. 

They  sent  the  children  into  the  next  room,  but  they  had  tor^ . 


MORNING 


121 


much  to  do  to  worry  about  them,  and  Jean-Christophe,  under 
the  attraction  of  the  horror  of  it,  peeped  through  the  half-open 
door  at  the  tragic  face  on  the  pillow;  the  man  strangled  by 
the  firm  clutch  that  had  him  by  the  neck;  the  face  which  grew 
ever  more  hollow  as  he  watched;  the  sinking  of  the  creature 
into  the  void,  which  seemed  to  suck  it  down  like  a pump;  and 
the  horrible  death-rattle,  the  mechanical  breathing,  like  a bubble 
of  air  bursting  on  the  surface  of  waters;  the  last  efforts  of  the 
body,  which  strives  to  live  when  the  soul  is  no  longer.  Then 
the  head  fell  on  one  side  on  the  pillow.  All,  all  was  silence. 

A few  moments  later,  in  the  midst  of  the  sobs  and  prayers 
and  the  confusion  caused  by  the  death,  Louisa  saw  the  child, 
pale,  wide-eyed,  with  gaping  mouth,  clutching  convulsively  at 
the  handle  of  the  door.  She  ran  to  him.  He  had  a seizure 
in  her  arms.  She  carried  him  away.  He  lost  consciousness. 
He  woke  up  to  find  himself  in  his  bed.  He  howled  in  terror, 
because  he  had  been  left  alone  for  a moment,  had  another 
seizure,  and  fainted  again.  For  the  rest  of  the  night  and  the 
next  day  he  was  in  a fever.  Finally,  he  grew  calm,  and  on  the 
next  night  fell  into  a deep  sleep,  which  lasted  until  the  middle 
of  the  following  day.  He  felt  that  some  one  was  walking  in 
his  room,  that  his  mother  was  leaning  over  his  bed  and  kissing 
him.  He  thought  he  heard  the  sweet  distant  sound  of  bells. 
But  he  would  not  stir;  he  was  in  a dream. 

When  he  opened  his  eyes  again  his  Uncle  Gottfried  was  sit- 
ting at  the  foot  of  his  bed.  Jean-Christophe  was  worn  out, 
and  could  remember  nothing.  Then  his  memory  returned,  and 
he  began  to  weep.  Gottfried  got  up  and  kissed  him. 

“ Well,  my  boy — well  ? ” he  said  gently. 

“ Oh,  uncle,  uncle ! ” sobbed  the  boy,  clinging  to  him. 

“ Cry,  then  . . .”  said  Gottfried.  “ Cry ! ” 

He  also  was  weeping. 

When  he  was  a little  comforted  Jean-Christophe  dried  his 
eyes  and  looked  at  Gottfried.  Gottfried  understood  that  he 
wanted  to  ask  something. 

“No,”  he  said,  putting  a finger  to  his  lips,  “you  must  not 
talk.  It  is  good  to  cry,  bad  to  talk.” 

The  boy  insisted. 

“ It  is  no  good.” 


t 


133 


JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 


^^Only  one  thing — only  one!  . . ^ 

^^What?^^ 

Jean-Christophe  hesitated. 

Oh,  uncle  I ” he  asked,  where  is  he  now  ? 

Gottfried  answered: 

^^He  is  with  the  Lord,  my  boy.^^ 

But  that  was  not  what  Jean-Christophe  had  asked. 

No;  you  do  not  understand.  Where  is  he — ^he  himself?'' 

(He  meant  the  body.) 

He  went  on  in  a trembling  voice: 

^^Is  he  still  in  the  house 

^^They  buried  the  good  man  this  morning,’^  said  Gottfried. 

Did  you  not  hear  the  bells  ? 

Jean-Christophe  was  comforted.  Then,  when  he  thought  that 
he  would  never  see  his  beloved  grandfather  again,  he  wept  once 
more  bitterly. 

Poor  little  beast ! said  Gottfried,  looking  pityingly  at  the 
child. 

Jean-Christophe  expected  Gottfried  to  console  him,  but  Gott- 
fried made  no  attempt  to  do  so,  knowing  that  it  was  useless. 

Uncle  Gottfried,^^  asked  the  boy,  are  not  you  afraid  of  it, 
too?^^ 

(Much  did  he  wish  that  Gottfried  should  not  have  been  afraid, 
and  would  tell  him  the  secret  of  it!) 

^Ssh ! he  said,  in  a troubled  voice.  . . . 

And  how  is  one  not  to  be  afraid  ? he  said,  after  a moment. 
^^But  what  can  one  do?  It  is  so.  One  must  put  up  with 
it.^^ 

Jean-Christophe  shook  his  head  in  protest. 

One  has  to  put  up  with  it,  my  boy,^^  said  Gottfried.  He 
ordered  it  up  yonder.  One  has  to  love  what  He  has  ordered.^^ 

I hate  Him ! said  Jean-Christophe,  angrily  shaking  his 
fist  at  the  sky. 

Gottfried  fearfully  bade  him  be  silent.  Jean-Christophe  him- 
self was  afraid  of  what  he  had  just  said,  and  he  began  to  pray 
with  Gottfried.  But  blood  boiled,  and  as  he  repeated  the  words 
of  servile  humility  and  resignation  there  was  in  his  inmost 
heart  a feeling  of  passionate  revolt  and  horror  of  the  abominable 
thing  and  the  monstrous  Being  who  had  been  able  to  create  it. 


I 


MORNING 


123 


Days  passed  and  nights  of  rain  over  the  freshly-turned  earth 
under  which  lay  the  remains  of  poor  old  Jean  Michel.  At 
the  moment  Melchior  wept  and  cried  and  sobbed  much,  but 
the  week  was  not  out  before  Jean-Christophe  heard  him  laugh- 
ing heartily.  When  the  name  of  the  dead  man  was  pronounced 
in  his  presence,  his  face  grew  longer  and  a lugubrious  ex- 
pression came  into  it,  but  in  a moment  he  would  begin  to  talk 
and  gesticulate  excitedly.  He  was  sincerely  afflicted,  but  it  was 
impossible  for  him  to  remain  sad  for  long. 

Louisa,  passive  and  resigned,  accepted  the  misfortune  as  she 
accepted  everything.  She  added  a prayer  to  her  daily  prayers; 
she  went  regularly  to  the  cemetery,  and  cared  for  the  grass 
as  if  it  were  part  of  her  household. 

Gottfried  paid  touching  attention  to  the  little  patch  of  ground 
where  the  old  man  slept.  When  he  came  to  the  neighborhood, 
he  brought  a little  souvenir — a cross  that  he  had  made,  or 
flowers  that  Jean  Michel  had  loved.  He  never  missed,  even 
if  he  were  only  in  the  town  for  a few  hours,  and  he  did  it  by 
stealth. 

Sometimes  Louisa  took  Jean-Christophe  with  her  on  her  visits 
to  the  cemetery.  Jean-Christophe  revolted  in  disgust  against 
the  fat  patch  of  earth  clad  in  its  sinister  adornment  of  flowers 
and  trees,  and  against  the  heavy  scent  which  mounts  to  the  sun, 
mingling  with  the  breath  of  the  sonorous  cypress.  But  he  dared 
not  confess  his  disgust,  because  he  condemned  it  in  himself  as 
cowardly  and  impious.  He  was  very  unhappy.  His  grand- 
father’s death  haunted  him  incessantly,  and  yet  he  had  long 
known  what  death  was,  and  had  thought  about  it  and  been 
afraid  of  it.  But  he  had  never  before  seen  it,  and  he  who 
sees  it  for  the  first  time  learns  that  he  knew  nothing,  neither 
of  death  nor  of  life.  One  moment  brings  everything  tottering. 
Reason  is  of  no  avail.  You  thought  you  were  alive,  you  thought 
you  had  some  experience  of  life;  you  see  then  that  you  knew 
nothing,  that  you  have  been  living  in  a veil  of  illusions  spun 
by  your  own  mind  to  hide  from  your  eyes  the  awful  counte- 
nance of  reality.  There  is  no  connection  between  the  idea  of 
suffering  and  the  creature  who  bleeds  and  suffers.  There  is 
no  connection  between  the  idea  of  death  and  the  convulsions 
of  body  and  soul  in  combat  and  in  death.  Human  language, 


124 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


human  wisdom,  are  only  a puppet-show  of  stiff  mechanical  dolls 
by  the  side  of  the  grim  charm  of  reality  and  the  creatures  of 
mind  and  blood,  whose  desperate  and  vain  efforts  are  strained 
to  the  fixing  of  a life  which  crumbles  away  with  every  day. 

Jean-Christophe  thought  of  death  day  and  night.  Memories 
of  the  last  agony  pursued  him.  He  heard  that  horrible  breath- 
ing ; every  night,  whatever  he  might  be  doing,  he  saw  his  grand- 
father again.  All  Nature  was  changed;  it  seemed  as  though 
there  were  an  icy  vapor  drawn  over  her.  Eound  him,  every- 
where, whichever  way  he  turned,  he  felt  upon  his  face  the  fatal 
breathing  of  the  blind,  all-powerful  Beast;  he  felt  himself  in 
the  grip  of  that  fearful  destructive  Form,  and  he  felt  that 
there  was  nothing  to  be  done.  But,  far  from  crushing  him, 
the  thought  of  it  set  him  afiame  with  hate  and  indignation. 
He  was  never  resigned  to  it.  He  butted  head  down  against 
the  impossible;  it  mattered  nothing  that  he  broke  his  head, 
and  was  forced  to  realize  that  he  was  not  the  stronger.  He 
never  ceased  to  revolt  against  suffering.  From  that  time  on  ■ 
his  life  was  an  unceasing  struggle  against  the  savagery  of  a ■ 
Fate  which  he  could  not  admit.  t 

The  very  misery  of  his  life  afforded  him  relief  from  the  * 
obsession  of  his  thoughts.  The  ruin  of  his  family,  which  only  ; 
Jean  Michel  had  withheld,  proceeded  apace  when  he  was  re-  ; 
moved.  With  him  the  Kraffts  had  lost  their  chief  means  of  * 
support,  and  misery  entered  the  house.  1 

Melchior  increased  it.  Far  from  working  more,  he  abandoned  \ 
himself  utterly  to  his  vice  when  he  was  free  of  the  only  force  | 
that  had  held  him  in  check.  Almost  every  night  he  returned  ^ 
home  drunk,  and  he  never  brought  back  his  earnings.  Besides,  1 
he  had  lost  almost  all  his  lessons.  One  day  he  had  appeared 
at  the  house  of  one  of  his  pupils  in  a state  of  complete  in-  j 
toxication,  and,  as  a consequence  of  this  scandal,  all  doors  were  I 
closed  to  him.  He  was  only  tolerated  in  the  orchestra  out  of 
regard  for  the  memory  of  his  father,  but  Louisa  trembled  lest 
he.  should  be  dismissed  any  day  after  a scene.  He  had  already 
been  threatened  with  it  on  several  evenings  when  he  had  turned 
up  in  his  place  about  the  end  of  the  performance. 

Twice  or  thrice  he  had  forgotten  altogether  to  put  in  an 
appearance.  And  of  what  was  he  not  capable  in  those  moments 


MOKNING 


125 


of  stupid  excitement  when  he  was  taken  with  the  itch  to  do 
and  say  idiotic  things!  Had  he  not  taken  it  into  his  head 
one  evening  to  try  and  play  his  great  violin  concerto  in  the 
middle  of  an  act  of  the  VcUJcyrie?  They  were  hard  put  to  it 
to  stop  him.  Sometimes,  too,  he  would  shout  with  laughter 
in  the  middle  of  a performance  at  the  amusing  pictures  that 
were  presented  on  the  stage  or  whirling  in  his  own  brain.  He 
was  a joy  to  his  colleagues,  and  they  passed  over  many  things 
because  he  was  so  funny.  But  such  indulgence  was  worse  than 
severity,  and  Jean-Christophe  could  have  died  for  shame. 

The  boy  was  now  first  violin  in  the  orchestra.  He  sat  so 
that  he  could  watch  over  his  father,  and,  when  necessary,  be- 
seech him,  and  make  him  be  silent.  It  was  not  easy,  and  the 
best  thing  was  not  to  pay  any  attention  to  him,  for  if  he  did, 
as  soon  as  the  sot  felt  that  eyes  were  upon  him,  he  would  take 
to  making  faces  or  launch  out  into  a speech.  Then  Jean- 
Christophe  would  turn  away,  trembling  with  fear  lest  he  should 
commit  some  outrageous  prank.  He  would  try  to  be  absorbed 
in  his  work,  but  he  could  not  help  hearing  Melchior’s  utter- 
ances and  the  laughter  of  his  colleagues.  Tears  would  come  into 
his  eyes.  The  musicians,  good  fellows  that  they  were,  had  seen 
that,  and  were  sorry  for  him.  They  would  hush  their  laughter, 
and  only  talk  about  his  father  when  Jean-Christophe  was  not 
by.  But  Jean-Christophe  was  conscious  of  their  pity.  He 
knew  that  as  soon  as  he  had  gone  their  jokes  would  break  out 
again,  and  that  Melchior  was  the  laughing-stock  of  the  town. 
He  could  not  stop  him,  and  he  was  in  torment.  He  used  to 
bring  his  father  home  after  the  play.  He  would  take  his  arm, 
put  up  with  his  pleasantries,  and  try  to  conceal  the  stumbling 
in  his  walk.  But  he  deceived  no  one,  and  in  spite  of  all  his 
efforts  it  was  very  rarely  that  he  could  succeed  in  leading  Mel- 
chior all  the  way  home.  At  the  corner  of  the  street  Melchior 
would  declare  that  he  had  an  urgent  appointment  with  some 
friends,  and  no  argument  could  dissuade  him  from  keeping 
this  engagement.  Jean-Christophe  took  care  not  to  insist  too 
much,  so  as  not  to  expose  himself  to  a scene  and  paternal 
imprecations  which  might  attract  the  neighbors  to  their  windows. 

All  the  household  money  slipped  away  in  this  fashion.  Mel- 
chior was  not  satisfied  with  drinking  away  his  earnings;  he 


drank  away  all  that  his  wife  and  son  so  hardly  earned.  Louisa 
used  to  weep,  but  she  dared  not  resist,  since  her  husband  had 
harshly  reminded  her  that  nothing  in  the  house  belonged  to 
her,  and  that  he  had  married  her  without  a sou.  Jean-Chris- 
tophe  tried  to  resist.  Melchior  boxed  his  ears,  treated  him 
like  a naughty  child,  and  took  the  money  out  of  his  hands. 
The  boy  was  twelve  or  thirteen.  He  was  strong,  and  was 
beginning  to  kick  against  being  beaten;  but  he  was  still  afraid 
to  rebel,  and  rather  than  expose  himself  to  fresh  humiliations 
of  the  kind  he  let  himself  be  plundered.  The  only  resource  that 
Louisa  and  Jean-Christophe  had  was  to  hide  their  money;  but 
Melchior  was  singularly  ingenious  in  discovering  their  hiding- 
places  when  they  were  not  there. 

Soon  that  was  not  enough  for  him.  He  sold  the  things  that 
he  had  inherited  from  his  father.  Jean-Christophe  sadly  saw  , 
the  precious  relics  go — the  books,  the  bed,  the  furniture,  the  j 
portraits  of  musicians.  He  could  say  nothing.  But  one  day,  j 
when  Melchior  had  crashed  into  Jean  Michel’s  old  piano,  he  jj 
swore  as  he  rubbed  his  knee,  and  said  that  there  was  no  longer 
room  to  move  about  in  his  own  house,  and  that  he  would  rid ; 
the  house  of  all  such  gimcrackery.  Jean-Christophe  cried  aloud.  ■ 
It  was  true  that  the  rooms  were  too  full,  since  all  Jean  Michel’s  i 
belongings  were  crowded  into  them,  so  as  to  be  able  to  sell ; 
the  house,  that  dear  house  in  which  Jean-Christophe  had  spent ; 
the  happiest  hours  of  his  childhood.  It  was  true  also  that  the 
old  piano  was  not  worth  much,  that  it  was  husky  in  tone,  and  | 
that  for  a long  time  Jean-Christophe  had  not  used  it,  since  | 
he  played  on  the  fine  new  piano  due  to  the  generosity  of  the  ^ 
Prince;  but  however  old  and  useless  it  might  be,  it  was  Jean-t 
Christophe’s  best  friend.  It  had  awakened  the  child  to  the  ■ 
boundless  world  of  music;  on  its  worn  yellow  keys  he  had 
discovered  with  his  fingers  the  kingdom  of  sounds  and  its  laws; 
it  had  been  his  grandfather’s  work  (months  had  gone  to  repair- 
ing it  for  his  grandson),  and  he  was  proud  of  it;  it  was  in 
some  sort  a holy  relic,  and  Jean-Christophe  protested  that  his 
father  had  no  right  to  sell  it.  Melchior  bade  him  be  silent. 
Jean-Christophe  cried  louder  than  ever  that  the  piano  was  his, 
and  that  he  forbade  any  one  to  touch  it ; but  Melchior  looked 
at  him  with  an  evil  smile,  and  said  nothing. 


MORNING 


127 


Next  day  Jean-Christophe  had  forgotten  the  affair.  He  came 
home  tired,  hut  in  a fairly  good  temper.  He  was  struck  by 
the  sly  looks  of  his  brothers.  They  pretended  to  be  absorbed 
in  their  books,  but  they  followed  him  with  their  eyes,  and 
watched  all  his  movements,  and  bent  over  their  books  again 
when  he  looked  at  them.  He  had  no  doubt  that  they  had  played 
some  trick  upon  him,  but  he  was  used  to  that,  and  did  not 
worry  about  it,  but  determined,  when  he  had  found  it  out,  to 
give  them  a good  thrashing,  as  he  always  did  on  such  occasions. 
He  scorned  to  look  into  the  matter,  and  he  began  to  talk  to  his 
father,  who  was  sitting  by  the  fire,  and  questioned  him  as  to 
the  doings  of  the  day  with  an  affectation  of  interest  which  suited 
bim  but  ill;  and  while  he  talked  he  saw  that  Melchior  was 
exchanging  stealthy  nods  and  winks  with  the  two  children. 
Something  caught  at  his  heart.  He  ran  into  his  room.  The 
place  where  the  piano  had  stood  was  empty!  He  gave  a cry 
of  anguish.  In  the  next  room  he  heard  the  stifled  laughter  of 
his  brothers.  The  blood  rushed  to  his  face.  He  rushed  in  to 
them,  and  cried: 

“ My  piano ! ” 

Melchior  raised  his  head  with  an  air  of  calm  bewilderment 
which  made  the  children  roar  with  laughter.  He  could  not 
contain  himself  when  he  saw  Jean-Christophe’s  piteous  look, 
and  he  turned  aside  to  guffaw.  Jean-Christophe  no  longer 
knew  what  he  was  doing.  He  hurled  himself  like  a mad  thing 
on  his  father.  Melchior,  lolling  in  his  chair,  had  no  time  to 
protect  himself.  The  boy  seized  him  by  the  throat  and  cried: 
“Thief!  Thief!” 

It  was  only  for  a moment.  Melchior  shook  himself,  and  sent 
Jean-Christophe  rolling  down  on  to  the  tile  floor,  though  in 
his  fury  he  was  clinging  to  him  like  grim  death.  The  boy’s 
head  crashed  against  the  tiles.  Jean-Christophe  got  upon  his 
knees.  He  was  livid,  and  he  went  on  saying  in  a choking 
voice : 

“Thief,  thief!  . . . You  are  robbing  us — mother  and  me. 
. . . Thief!  ...  You  are  selling  my  grandfather!” 

Melchior  rose  to  his  feet,  and  held  his  fist  above  Jean-Chris- 
tophe’s head.  The  boy  stared  at  him  with  hate  in  his  eyes. 
He  was  trembling  with  rage.  Melchior  began  to  tremble,  too. 


128 


JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 


He  sat  down,  and  hid  his  face  in  his  hands.  The  two  children 
had  run  away  screaming.  Silence  followed  the  uproar.  Mel- 
chior groaned  and  mumbled.  J ean-Christophe,  against  the  wall,, 
never  ceased  glaring  at  him  with  clenched  teeth,  and  he  trembled 
in  every  limb.  Melchior  began  to  blame  himself. 

I am  a thief ! I rob  my  family ! My  children  despise  me ! 

It  were  better  if  I were  dead ! 

When  he  had  finished  whining,  Jean-Christophe  did  not 
budge,  but  asked  him  harshly: 

Where  is  the  piano  ? 

^^At  WormsePs,^^  said  Melchior,  not  daring  to  look  at  him. 

Jean-Christophe  took  a step  forward,  and  said: 

The  money ! | 

Melchior,  crushed,  took  the  money  from  his  pocket  and  gave  | 
it  to  his  son.  Jean-Christophe  turned  towards  the  door.  Mel-  i 
chior  called  him: 

J ean-Christophe ! ; 

Jean-Christophe  stopped.  Melchior  went  on  in  a quavering  \ 
voice : 

Dear  Jean-Christophe  ...  do  not  despise  me ! i 

Jean-Christophe  fiung  his  arms  round  his  neck  and  sobbed:  ^ 

No,  father — dear  father ! I do  not  despise  you ! I am  so  i 
unhappy ! : 

They  wept  loudly.  Melchior  lamented:  ; 

It  is  not  my  fault.  I am  not  bad.  ThaPs  true,  J ean-  . 
Christophe  ? I am  not  bad  ? j 

He  promised  that  he  would  drink  no  more.  Jean-Christophe 
wagged  his  head  doubtfully,  and  Melchior  admitted  that  he  | 
could  not  resist  it  when  he  had  money  in  his  hands.  Jean-  j 
Christophe  thought  for  a moment  and  said: 

^^You  see,  father,  we  must  . . 

He  stopped. 

^^What  then?^^ 

I am  ashamed  . . 

Of  whom  ? asked  Melchior  naively 
Of  you.^^ 

Melchior  made  a face  and  said : 

That’s  nothing.” 

Jean-Christophe  explained  that  they  would  have  to  put  all 


MOENING 


129 


the  family  money,  even  Melchior’s  contribution,  into  the  hands 
of  some  one  else,  who  would  dole  it  out  to  Melchior  day  by 
day,  or  week  by  week,  as  he  needed  it.  Melchior,  who  was 
in  humble  mood — he  was  not  altogether  starving — agreed  to 
the  proposition,  and  declared  that  he  would  then  and  there 
write  a letter  to  the  Grand  Duke  to  ask  that  the  pension  which 
came  to  him  should  be  regularly  paid  over  in  his  name  to  Jean- 
Christophe.  Jean-Christophe  refused,  blushing  for  his  father’s 
humiliation.  But  Melchior,  thirsting  for  self-sacrifice,  insisted 
on  writing.  He  was  much  moved  by  his  own  magnanimity. 
Jean-Christophe  refused  to  take  the  letter,  and  when  Louisa 
came  in  and  was  acquainted  with  the  turn  of  events,  she  declared 
that  she  would  rather  beg  in  the  streets  than  expose  her  hus- 
band to  such  an  insult.  She  added  that  she  had  every  confidence 
in  him,  and  that  she  was  sure  he  would  make  amends  out  of 
love  for  the  children  and  herself.  In  the  end  there  was  a 
scene  of  tender  reconciliation  and  Melchior’s  letter  was  left  on 
the  table,  and  then  fell  under  the  cupboard,  where  it  remained 
concealed. 

But  a few  days  later,  when  she  was  cleaning  up,  Louisa 
found  it  there,  and  as  she  was  very  unhappy  about  Melchior’s 
fresh  outbreaks — he  had  forgotten  all  about  it — instead  of  tear- 
ing it  up,  she  kept  it.  She  kept  it  for  several  months,  always 
rejecting  the  idea  of  making  use  of  it,  in  spite  of  the  suffering 
she  had  to  endure.  But  one  day,  when  she  saw  Melchior  once 
more  beating  Jean-Christophe  and  robbing  him  of  his  money, 
she  could  bear  it  no  longer,  and  when  she  was  left  alone  with 
the  boy,  who  was  weeping,  she  went  and  fetched  the  letter,  and 
gave  it  him,  and  said: 

« Go!” 

Jean-Christophe  hesitated,  but  he  understood  that  there  was 
no  other  way  if  they  wished  to  save  from  the  wreck  the  little 
that  was  left  to  them.  He  went  to  the  Palace.  He  took  nearly 
an  hour  to  walk  a distance  that  ordinarily  took  twenty  minutes. 
He  was  overwhelmed  by  the  shame  of  what  he  was  doing.  His 
pride,  which  had  grown  great  in  the  years  of  sorrow  and  isola- 
tion, bled  at  the  thought  of  publicly  confessing  his 'father’s 
vice.  He  knew  perfectly  well  that  it  was  known  to  everybody, 
but  by  a strange  and  natural  inconsequence  he  would  not  admit 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 

it,  and  pretended  to  notice  nothing,  and  he  would  rather  have 
been  hewn  in  pieces  than  agree.  And  now,  of  his  own  accord, 
he  was  going!  . . . Twenty  times  he  was  on  the  point  of  turn- 
ing back.  He  walked  two  or  three  times  round  the  town,  turn- 
ing away  just  as  he  came  near  the  Palace.  He  was  not  alone 
in  his  plight.  His  mother  and  brothers  had  also  to  be  con- 
sidered. Since  his  father  had  deserted  them  and  betrayed  them, 
it  was  his  business  as  eldest  son  to  take  his  place  and  come  to 
their  assistance.  There  was  no  room  for  hesitation  or  pride; 
he  had  to  swallow  down  his  shame.  He  entered  the  Palace. 
On  the  staircase  he  almost  turned  and  fled.  He  knelt  down  on 
a step;  he  stayed  for  several  minutes  on  the  landing,  with  his 
hand  on  the  door,  until  some  one  coming  made  him  go  in. 

Every  one  in  the  offices  knew  him.  He  asked  to  see  His 
Excellency  the  Director  of  the  Theaters,  Baron  de  Hammer 
Langbach.  A young  clerk,  sleek,  bald,  pink-faced,  with  a white 
waistcoat  and  a pink  tie,  shook  his  hand  familiarly,  and  began 
to  talk  about  the  opera  of  the  night  before.  Jean-Christophe 
repeated  his  question.  The  clerk  replied  that  His  Excellency 
was  busy  for  the  moment,  but  that  if  Jean-Christophe  had  a 
request  to  make  they  could  present  it  with  other  documents 
which  were  to  be  sent  in  for  His  Excellency’s  signature.  Jean- 
Christophe  held  out  his  letter.  The  clerk  read  it,  and  gave 
a cry  of  surprise. 

Oh,  indeed ! ” he  said  brightly.  That  is  a good  idea.  He 
ought  to  have  thought  of  that  long  ago!  He  never  did  any- 
thing better  in  his  life ! Ah,  the  old  sot ! How  the  devil  did 
he  bring  himself  to  do  it  ? ” 

He  stopped  short.  Jean-Christophe  had  snatched  the  paper 
out  of  his  hands,  and,  white  with  rage,  shouted: 

I forbid  you ! . . . I forbid  you  to  insult  me ! ” 

The  clerk  was  staggered. 

But,  my  dear  Jean-Christophe,”  he  began  to  say,  whoever 
thought  of  insulting  you?  I only  said  what  everybody  thinks, 
and  what  you  think  yourself.” 

No ! ” cried  Jean-Christophe  angrily. 

^^It  is  not  true!”  said  Jean-Christophe. 


MORNING 


He  stamped  his  foot. 

The  clerk  shrugged  his  shoulders. 

“ In  that  case,  why  did  he  write  this  letter  ? ” 

“Because,”  said  Jean-Christophe  (he  did  not  know  what  to 
say) — “because,  when  I come  for  my  wages  every  month,  I 
prefer  to  take  my  father’s  at  the  same  time.  It  is  no  good 
our  both  putting  ourselves  out.  ...  My  father  is  very  busy.” 

He  reddened  at  the  absurdity  of  his  explanation.  The  clerk 
looked  at  him  with  pity  and  irony  in  his  eyes.  Jean-Christophe 
crumpled  the  paper  in  his  hands,  and  turned  to  go.  The  clerk 
got  up  and  took  him  by  the  arm. 

“ Wait  a moment,”  he  said.  “ I’ll  go  and  fix  it  up  for  you.” 

He  went  into  the  Director’s  office.  Jean-Christophe  waited, 
with  the  eyes  of  the  other  clerks  upon  him.  His  blood  boiled. 
He  did  not  know  what  he  was  doing,  what  to  do,  or  what  he 
ought  to  do.  He  thought  of  going  away  before  the  answer  was 
brought  to  him,  and  he  had  just  made  up  his  mind  to  that  when 
the  door  opened. 

“ His  Excellency  will  see  you,”  said  the  too  obliging  clerk. 

Jean-Christophe  had  to  go  in. 

His  Excellency  Baron  de  Hammer  Langbach,  a little  neat  old 
man  with  whiskers,  mustaches,  and  a shaven  chin,  looked  at 
Jean-Christophe  over  his  golden  spectacles  without  stopping 
writing,  nor  did  he  give  any  response  to  the  boy’s  awkward  bow. 

“So,”  he  said,  after  a moment,  “you  are,  asking,  Herr 
Krafft  . . . ?” 

“ Your  Excellency,”  said  Jean-Christophe  hurriedly,  “ I ask 
your  pardon.  I have  thought  better  of  it.  I have  nothing  to 
ask.” 

The  old  man  sought  no  explanation  for  this  sudden  recon- 
sideration. He  looked  more  closely  at  Jean-Christophe,  coughed, 
and  said: 

“ Herr  Krafft,  will  you  give  me  the  letter  that  is  in  your 
hand?” 

Jean-Christophe  saw  that  the  Director’s  gaze  was  fixed  on 
the  paper  which  he  was  still  unconsciously  holding  crumpled 
up  in  his  hand. 

“It  is  no  use.  Your  Excellency,”  he  murmured.  “It  is  not 
worth  while  now.” 


132 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


“ Please  give  it  me,”  said  the  old  man  quietly,  as  though 
he  had  not  heard. 

Mechanically  Jean-Christophe  gave  him  the  crumpled  letter, 
but  he  plunged  into  a torrent  of  stuttered  words  while  he  held 
out  his  hand  for  the  letter.  His  Excellency  carefully  smoothed 
out  the  paper,  read  it,  looked  at  Jean-Christophe,  let  him  floun- 
der about  with  his  explanations,  then  checked  him,  and  said  with 
a malicious  light  in  his  eyes ; 

“Very  well,  Herr  Krafft;  the  request  is  granted.” 

He  dismissed  him  with  a wave  of  his  hand  and  went  on  with 
his  writing. 

Jean-Christophe  went  out,  crushed. 

“No  offense,  Jean-Christophe ! ” said  the  clerk  kindly,  when 
the  boy  came  into  the  office  again.  Jean-Christophe  let  him 
shake  his  hand  without  daring  to  raise  his  eyes.  He  found 
himself  outside  the  Palace.  He  was  cold  with  shame.  Every-  ' 

thing  that  had  been  said  to  him  recurred  in  his  memory,  and  | 

he  imagined  that  there  was  an  insulting  irony  in  the  pity  of 
the  people  who  honored  and  were  sorry  for  him.  He  went  home, 
and  answered  only  with  a few  irritable  words  Louisa’s  questions,  ’■ 
as  though  he  bore  a grudge  against  her  for  what  he  had  just 
done.  He  was  racked  by  remorse  when  he  thought  of  his  father.  ! 

He  wanted  to  confess  everything  to  him,  and  to  beg  his  pardon.  -i 

Melchior  was  not  there.  Jean-Christophe  kept  awake  far  into  ;; 

the  night,  waiting  for  him.  The  more  he  thought  of  him  the  1 

more  his  remorse  quickened.  He  idealized  him ; he  thought  of  | 

him  as  weak,  kind,  unhappy,  betrayed  by  his  own  family.  As 
soon  as  he  heard  his  step  on  the  stairs  he  leaped  from  his  t 
bed  to  go  and  meet  him,  and  throw  himself  in  his  arms;  but  i 
Melchior  was  in  such  a disgusting  state  of  intoxication  that 
Jean-Christophe  had  not  even  the  courage  to  go  near  him, 
and  he  went  to  bed  again,  laughing  bitterly  at  his  own  illusions. 

When  Melchior  learned  a few  days  later  of  what  had  hap- 
pened, he  was  in  a towering  passion,  and,  in  spite  of  all  Jean- 
Christophe’s  entreaties,  he  went  and  made  a scene  at  the  Palace. 
But  he  returned  with  his  tail  between  his  legs,  and  breathed 
not  a word  of  what  had  happened.  He  had  been  very  badly 
received.  He  had  been  told  that  he  would  have  to  take  a very 
different  tone  about  the  matter,  that  the  pension  had  only  been 


MOKNING 


133 


continued  out  of  consideration  for  the  worth  of  his  son,  and 
that  if  in  the  future  there  came  any  scandal  concerning  him 
to  their  ears,  it  would  be  suppressed.  And  so  Jean-Christophe 
was  much  surprised  and  comforted  to  see  his  father  accept  his 
living  from  day  to  day,  and  even  boast  about  having  taken  the 
initiative  in  the  sacrifice. 

But  that  did  not  keep  Melchior  from  complaining  outside 
that  he  had  been  robbed  by  his  wife  and  children,  that  he  had 
put  himself  out  for  them  all  his  life,  and  that  now  they  let 
him  want  for  everything.  He  tried  also  to  extract  money  from 
Jean-Christophe  by  all  sorts  of  ingenious  tricks  and  devices, 
which  often  used  to  make  Jean-Christophe  laugh,  although  he 
was  hardly  ever  taken  in  by  them.  But  as  Jean-Christophe 
held  firm,  Melchior  did  not  insist.  He  was  curiously  intimi- 
dated by  the  severity  in  the  eyes  of  this  boy  of  fourteen  who 
judged  him.  He  used  to  avenge  himself  by  some  stealthy, 
dirty  trick.  He  used  to  go  to  the  cabaret  and  eat  and  drink 
as  much  as  he  pleased,  and  then  pay  nothing,  pretending  that 
his  son  would  pay  his  debts.  Jean-Christophe  did  not  protest, 
for  fear  of  increasing  the  scandal,  and  he  and  Louisa  exhausted 
their  resources  in  discharging  Melchior’s  debts.  In  the  end 
Melchior  more  and  more  lost  interest  in  his  work  as  violinist, 
since  he  no  longer  received  his  wages,  and  his  absence  from 
the  theater  became  so  frequent  that,  in  spite  of  Jean-Chris- 
tophe’s  entreaties,  they  had  to  dismiss  him.  The  boy  was  left 
to  support  his  father,  his  brothers,  and  the  whole  household. 

So  at  fourteen  Jean-Christophe  became  the  head  of  the 
family. 

He  stoutly  faced  his  formidable  task.  His  pride  would  not 
allow  him  to  resort  to  the  charity  of  others.  He  vowed  that 
he  would  pull  through  alone.  From  his  earliest  days  he  had 
suffered  too  much  from  seeing  his  mother  accept  and  even  ask 
for  humiliating  charitable  offerings.  He  used  to  argue  the 
matter  with  her  when  she  returned  home  triumphant  with  some 
present  that  she  had  obtained  from  one  of  her  patronesses. 
She  saw  no  harm  in  it,  and  was  glad  to  be  able,  thanks  to  the 
money,  to  spare  Jean-Christophe  a little,  and  to  bring  another 
meager  dish  forth  for  supper.  But  Jean-Christophe  would  be* 


134 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


come  gloomy,  and  would  not  talk  all  evening,  and  would  even 
refuse,  without  giving  any  reason,  to  touch  food  gained  in 
/ this  way.  Louisa  was  vexed,  and  clumsily  urged  her  son  to 
eat.  He  was  not  to  be  budged,  and  in  the  end  she  would  lose 
her  temper,  and  say  unkind  things  to  him,  and  he  would  retort. 
Then  he  would  fling  his  napkin  on  the  table  and  go  out.  His 
father  would  shrug  his  shoulders  and  call  him  a poseur;  his 
brothers  would  laugh  at  him  and  eat  his  portion. 

But  he  had  somehow  to  find  a livelihood.  His  earnings  from  | 
the  orchestra  were  not  enough.  He  gave  lessons.  His  talents 
as  an  instrumentalist,  his  good  reputation,  and,  above  all,  the 
Prince’s  patronage,  brought  him  a numerous  clientele  among 
the  middle  classes.  Every  morning  from  nine  o’clock  on  he 
taught  the  piano  to  little  girls,  many  of  them  older  than  him- 
self, who  frightened  him  horribly  with  their  coquetry  and  mad- 
dened him  with  the  clumsiness  of  their  playing.  They  were 
absolutely  stupid  as  far  as  music  went,  but,  on  the  other  hand,  I 
they  had  all,  more  or  less,  a keen  sense  of  ridicule,  and  their  i 
mocking  looks  spared  none  of  Jean-Christophe’s  awkwardnesses.  ^ 
It  was  torture  for  him.  Sitting  by  their  side  on  the  edge  of  ? 
his  chair,  stiff,  and  red  in  the  face;  bursting  with  anger,  and  ^ 
not  daring  to  stir;  controlling  himself  so  as  not  to  say  stupid 
things,  and  afraid  of  the  sound  of  his  own  voice,  so  that  he 
could  hardly  speak  a word;  trying  to  look  severe,  and  feeling  ; 
that  his  pupil  was  looking  at  him  out  of  the  corner  of  her  eye,  ^ 
he  would  lose  countenance,  grow  confused  in  the  middle  of  a | 
remark;  fearing  to  make  himself  ridiculous,  he  would  become  5 
so,  and  break  out  into  violent  reproach.  But  it  was  very  easy  | 
for  his  pupils  to  avenge  themselves,  and  they  did  not  fail  to  i 
do  so,  and  upset  him  by  a certain  way  of  looking  at  him,  and 
by  asking  him  the  simplest  questions,  which  made  him  blush 
up  to  the  roots  of  his  hair;  or  they  would  ask  him  to  do  them 
some  small  service,  such  as  fetching  something  they  had  for- 
gotten from  a piece  of  furniture,  and  that  was  for  him  a most 
painful  ordeal,  for  he  had  to  cross  the  room  under  fire  of 
malicious  looks,  which  pitilessly  remarked  the  least  awkward-  ^ 
ness  in  his  movements  and  his  clumsy  legs,  his  stiff  arms,  his 
body  cramped  by  his  shyness. 

From  these  lessons  he  had  to  hasten  to  rehearsal  at  the  theater. 


MOENING 


135 


Often  he  had  no  time  for  lunch,  and  he  used  to  carry  a pi^e 
of  bread  and  some  cold  meat  in  his  pocket  to  ^ 

interval.  Sometimes  he  had  to  take  the  place  of  Tobias 
the  Musik  DireUor,  who  was  interested  in  hm,  and  sometimes 
had  him  to  conduct  the  orchestra  rehearsals  instead  of 
And  he  had  also  to  go  on  with  ^ 

Other  piano  lessons  filled  his  day  until  the  hour  of  the  per- 
forming and  very  often  in  the  evening  after  the  p ay  he  was 
'Iirflr  to  play  at  the  Palace.  There  he  had  to  play  for  an 
hour  or  two.^  The  Princess  laid  claim  to  a knowledge  of  music. 
She  was  very  fond  of  it,  but  had  never  been  able  to  perceive 
the  difference  between  good  and  bad.  She  used  to 
Christophe  play  through  strange  FOgram«ies,  in  which  du 
rhapsodies  stood  side  by  side  with  masterpieces.  ^ 

greatest  pleasure  was  to  make  him  improvise  and  she  used  to 
provide  him  with  heartbreakingly  sentimental  themes. 

^ Jean-Christophe  used  to  leave  about  midnight,  worn  out,  wte 
his  hands  burning,  his  head  aching,  his  stomach  emp  y. 

;iTn  . ™eat,  Im  outside  snow  would  be  fa  hug,  or  there 
would  be  an  icy  fog.  He  had  to  walk  across  half  the  town  to 
Taeh  homo.  He  went  on  foot,  his  «h  chattonng,  longing 
to  sleep  and  to  cry,  and  he  had  to  take  care  not  to  splash  h 

only  evening  dress-snit  in  the  puddles. 

He  would  go  up  to  his  room,  which  he  still  shared  with  his 
brothers,  and  never  was  he  so  overwhelmed  by  dis^t  and 
despair  with  his  life  as  at  the  moment  when  in  ^tti^ 
with  its  stifling  smell,  he  was  at  last  permitted  to  take  o 
the  halter  of  hfs  misery.  He  had  hardly  the  heart  to  undress 
himself.  Happily,  no  sooner  did  his  \ ^ 

than  he  would  sink  into  a heavy  sleep  which  deprived  him  of 

all  consciousness  of  his  troubles. 

But  he  had  to  get  up  by  dawn  in  summer,  and  before  dawn 
in  winter.  He  wished  to  do  his  own  work.  It  w^  all  the 
free  time  that  he  had  between  five  o’clock  and  eight.  Even 
then  he  had  to  waste  some  of  it  by  work  to  coi^and,  for  tes 
title  of  Hof  Musicus  and  his  favor  with  the  Grand  Duke  exacted 
from  bim  official  compositions  for  the  Court  festivals. 

So  the  very  source  of  his  life  was  poisoned.  Even  his  dreams 
were  not  free,  but,  as  usual,  this  restraint  made  them  only  the 


136 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


stronger.  When  nothing  hampers  action,  the  soul  has  fewer 
reasons  for  action,  and  the  closer  the  walls  of  Jean-Christophe’s 
prison  of  care  and  banal  tasks  were  drawn  about  him,  the  more 
his  heart  in  its  revolt  felt  its  independence.  In  a life  without 
obstacles  he  would  doubtless  have  abandoned  himself  to  chance 
and  to  the  voluptuous  sauntering  of  adolescence.  As  he  could 
be  free  only  for  an  hour  or  two  a day,  his  strength  flowed  into 
that  space  of  time  like  a river  between  walls  of  rock.  It  is  a 
good  discipline  for  art  for  a man  to  confine  his  efforts  between 
unshakable  bounds.  In  that  sense  it  may  be  said  that  misery 
is  a master,  not  only  of  thought,  but  of  style  j it  teaches  sobriety 
to  the  mind  as  to  the  body.  When  time  is  doled  out  and 
thoughts  measured,  a man  says  no  word  too  much,  and  grows 
accustomed  to  thinking  only  what  is  essential^  so  he  lives  at 
double  pressure,  having  less  time  for  living. 

This  had  happened  in  Jean-Christophe’s  case.  Under  his 
yoke  he  took  full  stock  of  the  value  of  liberty  and  he  never  I 

frittered  away  the  precious  minutes  with  useless  words  or  il 

actions.  His  natural  tendency  to  write  diffusely,  given  up  to  ; 

all  the  caprice  of  a mind  sincere  but  indiscriminating,  found  ! 

correction  in  being  forced  to  think  and  do  as  much  as  possible 
in  the  least  possible  time.  Nothing  had  so  much  influence  ' 
on  his  artistic  and  moral  development — not  the  lessons  of 
his  masters,  nor  the  example  of  the  masterpieces.  During  ii 

the  years  when  the  character  is  formed  he  came  to  consider  ' 

music  as  an  exact  language,  in  which  every  sound  has  a mean-  \ 

ing,  and  at  the  same  time  he  came  to  loathe  those  musicians  | 

who  talk  without  saying  anything.  ; 

And  yet  the  compositions  which  he  wrote  at  this  time  were  -j 
still  far  from  expressing  himself  completely,  because  he  was 
still  very  far  from  having  completely  discovered  himself.  He 
was  seeking  himself  through  the  mass  of  acquired  feelings  which 
education  imposes  on  a child  as  second  nature.  He  had  only 
intuitions  of  his  true  being,  until  he  should  feel  the  passions 
of  adolescence,  which  strip  the  personality  of  its  borrowed  gar- 
ments as  a thunder-clap  purges  the  sky  of  the  mists  that  hang 
over  it.  Vague  and  great  forebodings  were  mingled  in  him 
with  strange  memories,  of  which  he  could  not  rid  himself.  He 
raged  against  these  lies;  he  was  wretched  to  see  how  inferior 


MOKNING 


137 


what  he  wrote  wae  to  what  he  thought  ; 

”a2r  H.  ri  e-a  r— rr 

deteat,  tie  lougeu  j tnoment  of  illusion 

thint^s  and  always  he  missed  fire.  Alter  a mome 
„ hf  ™te  he  iw  that  what  he  had  aone  was  worthless.  He 

.a  ™oSta  »«  Mt^aqt  of  Pallm,  written  on  the  occasion 

S irmBAgt  ofprinLss  Adelaiae-pnblished  at  pea  ex- 
pense in  mins  de  Inxs,  which  his 

tor  posterity;  tor  he  believed  in  postenty.  He  wept  m his 

"Te^rer'years!  No  respite,  no  releas^nothing  to  create 

a diversion  from  such  maddening  toil;  no  games,  no  friends, 
a diversion  afternoon,  when  other 

Sren  played,  young  Jean-Christophe,  -^is^brows^kmt 

in  attention,  was  at  his  place  in  t e ore  children 

and  ill-lighted  theater;  and  in  the  evening,  when  other  ctaldren 
were  “hi,  he  was  still  there,  sitting  in  his  chair,  howed  with 

” N'i°Mmacy  with  his  brothers.  The  younger,  Ernest  was 

twelve  He  was  a little  ragamuIBn.  vicious  and  impudent, 
who  spent  his  days  with  other  rapscallions  like  himself,  and 
from  their  company  had  caught  not  only  deplorable  manners, 

but  shameful  habits  which  good  ^ e ®Jne 

so  much  as  suspected  their  existence,  was  ^ 

day.  The  other,  Eodolphe,  the  favorite  of 
was  to  go  into  business.  He  was  steady,  quiet  but  sly.  He 
thought  himself  much  superior  to  Jean-Christophe,  and  di 
admft  his  authority  in  the  house,  although  it  seemed  natural 
to  him  to  eat  the  food  that  he  provided.  He  ! 

cause  of  Theodore  and  Melchior’s  ill-feeling  agamst  ^an-C 
Sophe  and  used  to  repeat  their  absurd  gossip-  Neither  of 
the  brothers  cared  for  music,  and  Eodolphe,  in  imitation  o i 
uncle  affected  to  despise  it.  Chafing  against  Jean-Christophe 
authority  and  lectures-for  he  took  himself  very  seriously  as 
the  head  of  the  family— the  two  boys  had  tried  to  rebel,  but 


138 


JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 


Jean-Christophe,  who  had  lusty  fists  and  the  consciousness  of 
right,  sent  them  packing.  Still  they  did  not  for  that  cease 
to  do  with  him  as  they  liked.  They  abused  his  credulity,  and 
laid  traps  for  him,  into  which  he  invariably  fell.  They  used 
to  extort  money  from  him  with  barefaced  lies,  and  laughed  at 
him  behind  his  back.  Jean-Christophe  was  always  taken  in. 
He  had  so  much  need  of  being  loved  that  an  affectionate  word 
was  enough  to  disarm  his  rancor.  He  would  have  forgiven 
them  everything  for  a little  love.  But  his  confidence  was  cruelly 
shaken  when  he  heard  them  laughing  at  his  stupidity  after  a 
scene  of  hypocritical  embracing  which  had  moved  him  to  tears, 
and  they  had  taken  advantage  of  it  to  rob  him  of  a gold  watch, 
a present  from  the  Prince,  which  they  coveted.  He  despised 
them,  and  yet  went  on  letting  himself  be  taken  in  from  his 
unconquerable  tendency  to  trust  and  to  love.  He  knew  it.  He  ‘ 
raged  against  himself,  and  he  used  to  thrash  his  brothers  ■; 
soundly  when  he  discovered  once  more  that  they  had  tricked  ; 
him.  That  did  not  keep  him  from  swallowing  almost  immedi-  ' 
ately  the  fresh  hook  which  it  pleased  them  to  bait  for  him. 

A more  bitter  cause  of  suffering  was  in  store  for  him.  He  i 
learned  from  officious  neighbors  that  his  father  was  speaking  i 
ill  of  him.  After  having  been  proud  of  his  son’s  successes,  and  ■ 
having  boasted  of  them  everywhere,  Melchior  was  weak  and  ' 
shameful  enough  to  be  jealous  of  them.  He  tried  to  decry  ; 
them.  It  was  stupid  to  weep ; J ean-Christophe  could  only  shrug  ^ 
his  shoulders  in  contempt.  It  was  no  use  being  angry  about  it,  | 
for  his  father  did  not  know  what  he  was  doing,  and  was  em-  ' 
bittered  by  his  own  downfall.  The  boy  said  nothing.  He  was  | 
afraid,  if  he  said  anything,  of  being  too  hard;  but  he  was  cut  i 
to  the  heart. 

They  were  melancholy  gatherings  at  the  family  evening  meal 
round  the  lamp,  with  a spotted  cloth,  with  all  the  stupid  chatter 
and  the  sound  of  the  jaws  of  these  people  whom  he  despised 
and  pitied,  and  yet  loved  in  spite  of  everything.  Only  between 
himself  and  his  brave  mother  did  Jean-Christophe  feel  a bond 
of  affection.  But  Louisa,  like  himself,  exhausted  herself  during 
the  day,  and  in  the  evening  she  was  worn  out  and  hardly  spoke, 
and  after  dinner  used  to  sleep  in  her  chair  over  her  darning. 
And  she  was  so  good  that  she  seemed  to  make  no  difference 


MOKNING 


139 


in  her  love  between  her  husband  and  her  three  sons.  She  loved 
them  all  equally.  Jean-Christophe  did  not  find  in  her  the 

trusted  friend  that  he  so  much  needed.  ^ - v. 

So  he  was  driven  in  upon  himself.  For  days  together  he 
would  not  speak,  fulfilling  his  tiresome  and  wearing  task  with 
a sort  of  silent  rage.  Such  a mode  of  living  was  dangerous, 
especially  for  a child  at  a critical  age,  when  he  is  most  sensitive, . 
and  is  exposed  to  every  agent  of  destruction  and  the  risk  of 
being  deformed  for  the  rest  of  his  life.  Jean-Christophe  s 
health  suffered  seriously.  He  had  been  endowed  by  his  paren  s 
with  a healthy  constitution  and  a sound  and  healthy  body;  but 
his  very  healthiness  only  served  to  feed  his  suffering  when  the 
weight  of  weariness  and  too  early  cares  had  opened  up  a gap 
by  which  it  might  enter.  Quite  early  in  life  there  were  signs 
of  grave  nervous  disorders.  When  he  was  a small  boy  he  was 
subiect  to  fainting-fits  and  convulsions  and  vomiting  whenever 
he  encountered  opposition.  When  he  was  seven  or  eight  about 
the  time  of  the  concert,  his  sleep  had  been  troubled.  He  used 
to  talk,  cry,  laugh  and  weep  in  his  sleep,  and  this  habit  re- 
turned to  him  whenever  he  had  too  much  to  think  ot.  Ihen 
he  had  cruel  headaches,  sometimes  shooting  pains  at  the  base 
of  his  skull  or  the  top  of  his  head,  sometimes  a leaden  heavi- 
ness. His  eyes  troubled  him.  Sometimes  it  was  as  though 
red-hot  needles  were  piercing  his  eyeballs.  He  was  subject  to 
fits  of  dizziness,  when  he  could  not  see  to  read,  and  had  to 
stop  for  a minute  or  two.  Insufficient  and  unsound  food  and 
irregular  meals  ruined  the  health  of  his  stomach.  He  was 
racked  by  internal  pains  or  exhausted  by  diarrhea.  But  noth- 
ing brought  him  more  suffering  than  his  heart.  It  beat  with 
a crazy  irregularity.  Sometimes  it  would  leap  in  his  bosom, 
and  seem  like  to  break;  sometimes  it  would  hardly  beat  at 
all,  and  seem  like  to  stop.  At  night  his  temperature  would 
vary  alarmingly;  it  would  change  suddenly  from  fever-point 
to  next  to  nothing.  He  would  burn,  then  shiver  with  cold, 
pass  through  agony.  His  throat  would  go  dry ; a lump  m it 
would  prevent  his  breathing.  Naturally  his  pagination 
took  fire.  He  dared  not  say  anything  to  his  family  of  what 
he  was  going  through,  but  he  was  continually  dissecting  it  with 
a minuteness  which  either  enlarged  his  sufferings  or  created 


140 


JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 


new  ones.  He  decided  that  he  had  every  known  illness  one 
after  the  other..  He  believed  that  he  was  going  blind,  and  as 
he  sometimes  used  to  turn  giddy  as  he  walked,  he  thought 
that  he  was  going  to  fall  down  dead.  Always  that  dreadful 
fear  of  being  stopped  on  his  road,  of  dying  before  his  time, 
obsessed  him,  overwhelmed  him,  and  pursued  him.  Ah,  if  he 
had  to  die,  at  least  let  it  not  be  now,  not  before  he  had  tasted 
victory!  . . . 

Victory  . . . the  fixed  idea  which  never  ceases  to  burn  within 
him  without  his  being  fully  aware  of  it— the  idea  which  bears 
him  up  through  all  his  disgust  and  fatigues  and  the  stagnant 
morass  of  such  a life!  A dim  and  great  foreknowledge  of 
what  he  will  be  some  day,  of  what  he  is  already!  . . . What 
is  he?  A sick,  nervous  child,  who  plays  the  violin  in  the 
orchestra  and  writes  mediocre  concertos?  Noj  far  more  than  ■ 
such  a child.  That  is  no  more  than  the  wrapping,  the  seeming 
of  a day ; that  is  not  his  Being.  There  is  no  connection  between 
his  Being  and  the  existing  shape  of  his  face  and  thought.  He 
knows  that  well.  When  he  looks  at  himself  in  the  mirror  he 
does  not  know  himself.  That  broad  red  face,  those  prominent  ■ 
eyebrows,  those  little  sunken  eyes,  that  short  thick  nose,  that  ! 
sullen  mouth — the  whole  mask,  ugly  and  vulgar,  is  foreign  to 
himself.  Neither  does  he  know  himself  in  his  writings. 
He  judges,  he  knows  that  what  he  does  and  what  he  is  are 
nothing ; and  yet  he  is  sure  of  what  he  will  be  and  do.  Some-  j 
times  he  falls  foul  of  such  certainty  as  a vain  lie.  He  takes  ] 
pleasure  in  humiliating  himself  and  bitterly  mortifying  him-  I 
self  by  way  of  punishment.  But  his  certainty  endures ; nothing  | 
can  alter  it.  Whatever  he  does,  whatever  he  thinks,  none  of  j 
his  thoughts,  actions,  or  writings  contain  him  or  express  him. 

He  knows,  he  has  this  strange  presentiment,  that  the  more  that 
he  is,  is  not  contained  in  the  present  but  is  what  he  will  be, 
what  he  will  be  to-morrow.  He  will  be!  ...  He  is  fired  by 
that  faith,  he  is  intoxicated  by  that  light ! Ah,  if  only  To-day 
does  not  block  the  way ! If  only  he  does  not  fall  into  one 
of  the  cunning  traps  which  To-day  is  forever  laying  for  him ! 

So  he  steers  his  bark  across  the  sea  of  days,  turning  his  eyes 
neither  to  right  nor  left,  motionless  at  the  helm,  with  his  gaze 
fixed  on  the  bourne,  the  refuge,  the  end  that  he  .has  in  sight. 


14 


MOENING 

In  the  orchestra,  among  the  talkative  musicians,  at  table  with 
his  own  family,  at  the  Palace,  while  he  is  playing  without  a 
thought  of  what  he  is  playing,  for  the  entertainment  of  Koyai 
folk— it  is  in  that  future,  that  future  which  a speck  may  bring 
toppling  to  earth — no  matter,  it  is  in  that  that  he  lives. 

He  is  at  his  old  piano,  in  his  garret,  alone.  Night  falls. 
The  dying  light  of  day  is  cast  upon  his  music.  He  strains  his 
eyes  to  read  the  notes  until  the  last  ray  of  light  is  dead.  The 
tenderness  of  hearts  that  are  dead  breathed  forth  from  the 
dumb  page  fills  him  with  love.  His  eyes  are  filled  with  tears. 
It  seems  to  him  that  a beloved  creature  is  standing  behind  him, 
that  soft  breathing  caresses  his  cheek,  that  two  arms  are  about 
his  neck.  He  turns,  trembling.  He  feels,  he  knows,  that  he 
is  not  alone.  A soul  that  loves  and  is  loved  is  there,  near  him. 
He  groans  aloud  because  he  cannot  perceive  it,  and  yet  that 
shadow  of  bitterness  falling  upon  his  ecstasy  has  sweetness,  too. 
Even  sadness  has  its  light.  He  thinks  of  his  beloved  masters, 
of  the  genius  that  is  gone,  though  its  soul  lives  on  in  the  music 
which  it  had  lived  in  its  life.  His  heart  is  overflowing  with 
love ; he  dreams  of  the  superhuman  happiness  which  must  have 
been  the  lot  of  these  glorious  men,  since  the  reflection  only  of 
their  happiness  is  still  so  much  aflame.  He  dreams  of  being 
like  them,  of  giving  out  such  love  as  this,  with  lost  rays  to 
lighten  his  misery  with  a godlike  smile.  In  his  turn  to  be 
a god,  to  give  out  the  warmth  of  joy,  to  be  a sun  of  life ! . . . 

Alas ! if  one  day  he  does  become  the  equal  of  those  whom  he 
loves,  if  he  does  achieve  that  brilliant  happiness  for  which  he 
longs,  he  will  see  the  illusion  that  was  upon  him.  . • • 


II 

OTTO 

One  Sunday  when  Jean-Christophe  had  been  invited  by  his 
Musik  Direktor  to  dine  at  the  little  country  house  which  Tobias 
Pfeiffer  owned  an  hour’s  journey  from  the  town,  he  took  the 
Rhine  steamboat.  On  deck  he  sat  next  to  a boy  about  his  own 


.2 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


age,  who  eagerly  made  room  for  him.  Jean-Christophe  paid 
no  attention,  but  after  a moment,  feeling  that  his  neighbor 
had  never  taken  his  eyes  off  him,  he  turned  and  looked  at  him. 
He  was  a fair  boy,  with  round  pink  cheeks,  with  his  hair  parted 
on  one  side,  and  a shade  of  down  on  his  lip.  He  looked  frankly 
what  he  was — a hobbledehoy — though  he  made  great  efforts  to 
seem  grown  up.  He  was  dressed  with  ostentatious  care — ^flannel 
suit,  light  gloves,  white  shoes,  and  a pale  blue  tie — and  he  car- 
ried a little  stick  in  his  hand.  He  looked  at  Jean-Christophe 
out  of  the  corner  of  his  eye  without  turning  his  head,  with 
his  neck  stiff,  like  a hen;  and  when  Jean-Christophe  looked 
at  him  he  blushed  up  to  his  ears,  took  a newspaper  from  his 
pocket,  and  pretended  to  be  absorbed  in  it,  and  to  look  impor- 
tant over  it.  But  a few  minutes  later  he  dashed  to  pick  up 
Jean- Christophers  hat,  which  had  fallen.  Jean-Christophe,  sur- 
prised at  such  politeness,  looked  once  more  at  the  boy,  and 
once  more  he  blushed.  Jean-Christophe  thanked  him  curtly,  for 
he  did  not  like  such  obsequious  eagerness,  and  he  hated  to  be 
fussed  with.  All  the  same,  he  was  flattered  by  it. 

Soon  it  passed  from  his  thoughts;  his  attention  was  occupied 
by  the  view.  It  was  long  since  he  had  been  able  to  escape 
from  the  town,  and  so  he  had  keen  pleasure  in  the  wind  that 
beat  against  his  face,  in  the  sound  of  the  water  against  the 
boat,  in  the  great  stretch  of  water  and  the  changing  spectacle 
presented  by  the  banks — ^bluffs  gray  and  dull,  willow-trees  half 
under  water,  pale  vines,  legendary  rocks,  towns  crowned  with 
Gothic  towers  and  factory  chimneys  belching  black  smoke. 
And  as  he  was  in  ecstasy  over  it  all,  his  neighbor  in  a choking 
voice  timidly  imparted  a few  historic  facts  concerning  the  ruins 
that  they  saw,  cleverly  restored  and  covered  with  ivy.  He 
seemed  to  be  lecturing  to  himself.  Jean-Christophe,  roused  to 
interest,  plied  him  with  questions.  The  other  replied  eagerly, 
glad  to  display  his  knowledge,  and  with  every  sentence  he  ad- 
dressed himself  directly  to  Jean-Christophe,  calling  him  "'Herr 
Hof  Violinist/' 

"^You  know  me,  then?^^  said  Jean-Christophe. 

Oh  yes,’^  said  the  boy,  with  a simple  admiration  that  tickled 
Jean-Christophe^s  vanity. 

They  talked.  The  boy  had  often  seen  Jean-Christophe  at 


MOKNING 


143 


concerts  and  his  imagination  had  been  touched  by  everything 
that  he  had  heard  about  him.  He  did  not  say  so  to  Jean- 
Christophe  but  Jean-Christophe  felt  it,  and  was  pleasantly  sur- 
prised  by  it.  He  was  not  used  to  being  spoken  to  m this  tone 
It  eager  respect.  He  went  on  questioning  his  neighbor  about 
the  history  of  the  country  through  which  they  were  passing. 
The  le/ set  out  all  the  knowledge  that  he  had,  and  Jean- 
Christophe  admired  his  learning.  But  that  was  o^ly  ^he  peg 
on  which  their  conversation  hung.  What  interested  them  wa 
the  making  of  each  other’s  acquaintance.  They  dared  not 
frankly  approach  the  subject;  they  returned  to  it 
again  lith  awkward  questions.  Finally  they 
Christophe  learned  that  his  new  friend  was  called  Otto  Diener, 
and  was  the  son  of  a rich  merchant  in  the  town.  It  appeared, 
naturally,  that  they  had  friends  in  common,  and  little  by  little 
their  tongues  were  loosed.  They  were  talking  eagerly  when 
the  boat  arrived  at  the  town  at  which  Jean-Christophe  was , 
to  get  out.  Otto  got  out,  too.  That  surprised  them,  and  Jean- 
Christophe  proposed  that  they  should  take  a walk  together  unti 
dinner-time.  They  struck  out  across  the  fields.  Jean-Chns- 
tophe  had  taken  Otto’s  arm  familiarly,  and  was  telling  him 
his  plans  as  if  he  had  known  |iim  from  his  birth  He  ^adjieen 
so  much  deprived  of  the  society  of  children  of  his  own  age 
that  he  found  an  inexpressible  joy  in  being  with  this  y, 
so  learned  and  well  brought  up,  who  was  in  sympathy  with 

Time  passed,  and  Jean-Christophe  took  no  count  of  it.  Diener, 
proud  of  the  confidence  which  the  young  musician  showed  him, 
dared  not  point  out  that  the  dinner-hour  had  run^  At  last 
he  thought  that  he  must  remind  him  of  it,  but  Jean-Christophe 
who  had  begun  the  ascent  of  a hill  in  the  woods  declared  that 
they  must  go  to  the  top,  and  when  they  reached  i*  ^ lay  down 
on  the  grass  as  though  he  meant  to  spend  the  day  ther  . 
a quarter  of  an  hour  Diener,  seeing  that  he  seemed  to  hav 
no  intention  of  moving,  hazarded  again . 

And  your  dinner?^'  v • -u 

Jean-Christophe,  lying  at  full  length,  with  his  hands  behind 

his  head,  said  quietly: 

“Tssh!” 


■■ 

144 ; JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 

Then  he  looked  at  Otto,  saw  his  scared  look,  and  began  to 
laugh.  ® 

“ It  is  too  good  here,”  he  explained.  “ I shan’t  go.  Let  them 
wait  for  me ! ” 

He  half  rose. 

“Are  you  in  a hurry?  No?  Do  you  know  what  we’ll  do? 
We’ll  dine  together.  I know  of  an  inn.” 

Diener  would  have  had  many  objections  to  make — not  that 
any  one  was  waiting  for  him,  but  because  it  was  hard  for  him 
to  come  to  any  sudden  decision,  whatever  it  might  be.  He 
was  methodical,  and  needed  to  be  prepared  beforehand.  But 
Jean-Christophe’s  question  was  put  in  such  a tone  as  allowed 
of  no  refusal.  He  let  himself  be  dragged  oif,  and  they  began 
to  talk  again.  " , 

At  the  inn  their  eagerness  died  down.  Both  were  occupied 
with  the  question  as  to  who  should  give  the  dinner,  and  each  J 

within  himself  made  it  a point  of  honor  to  give  it— Diener  '! 

because  he  was  the  richer,  Jean-Christophe  because  he  was  ^ 
the  poorer.  They  made  no  direct  reference  to  the  matter,  but 
Diener  made  great  efforts  to  assert  his  right  by  the  tone  of  ! 

authority  which  he  tried  to  take  as  he  asked  for  the  menu.  ! 

Jean-Christophe  understood  what  he  was  at  and  turned  the 
tables  on  him  by  ordering  other  dishes  of  a rare  kind.  He  ' 
wanted  to  show  that  he  was  as  much  at  his  ease  as  anybody,  j 
and  when  Diener  tried  again  by  endeavoring  to  take  upon  him-  ■ 
self  the  choice  of  wine,  Jean-Christophe  crushed  him  with  a | 
look,  and  ordered  a bottle  of  one  of  the  most  expensive  vintages  I 
they  had  in  the  inn.  J 

When  they  found  themselves  seated  before  a considerable  • 

repast,  they  were  abashed  by  it.  They  could  find  nothing  to  ‘ 

say , ate  mincingly,  and  were  awkward  and  constrained  in 
their  movements.  They  became  conscious  suddenly  that 
they  were  strangers,  and  they  watched  each  other.  They 
made  vain  efforts  to  revive  the  conversation;  it  dropped 
immediately.  Their  first  half-hour  was  a time  of  fearful  bore- 
dom. Fortunately,  the  meat  and  drink  soon  had  an  effect  on 
them,  and  they  looked  at  each  other  more  confidently.  Jean- 
Christophe  especially,  who  was  not  used  to  such  good  things, 
became  extraordinarily  loquacious.  He  told  of  the  difficulties 


MOEOTNG  145 

of  his  life,  and  Otto,  breaking  through  his  reserve,  confessed 
that  he  also  was  not  happy.  He  was  weak  and  timid,  and  his 
schoolfellows  put  upon  him.  They  laughed  at  him,  and  could 
not  forgive  him  for  despising  their  vulgar  manners.  They 
played  all  sorts  of  tricks  on  him.  Jean-Christophe  clenched 
his  fists,  and  said  they  had  better  not  try  it  in  his  presence. 
Otto  also  was  misunderstood  by  his  family.  Jean-Christoph^ 
knew  the  unhappiness  of  that,  and  they  commiserated  each  other 
on  their  common  misfortunes.  Diener’s  parents  wanted  him 
to  become  a merchant,  and  to  step  into  his  father’s  place,  but 
he  wanted  to  be  a poet.  He  would  be  a poet,  even  though  he 
had  to  fly  the  town,  like  Schiller,  and  brave  poverty!  (His 
father’s  fortune  would  all  come  to  him,  and  it  was  considerable.) 
He  confessed  blushingly  that  he  had  already  written  verses  on 
the  sadness  of  life,  but  he  could  not  bring  himself  to  recite 
them,  in  spite  of  Jean-Christophe’s  entreaties.  But  in  the  end 
he  did  give  two  or  three  of  them,  dithering  with  emotion.  Jean- 
Christophe  thought  them  admirable.  They  exchanged  plans. 
Later  on  they  would  work  together;  they  would  write  dramas 
and  song-cycles.  They  admired  each  other.  Besides  his  reputa- 
tion as  a musician,  Jean-Christophe’s  strength  and  bold  ways 
made  an  impression  on  Otto,  and  Jean-Christophe  was  sensible 
of  Otto’s  elegance  and  distinguished  manners — everything  in 
this  world  is  relative— and  of  his  ease  of  manner— that  ease  of 
manner  which  he  looked  and  longed  for. 

Made  drowsy  by  their  meal,  with  their  elbows  on  the  table, 
they  talked  and  listened  to  each  other  with  softness  in  their 
eyes.  The  afternoon  drew  on;  they  had  to  go.  Otto  made  a 
last  attempt  to  procure  the  bill,  but  Jean-Christophe  nailed  him 
to  his  seat  with  an  angry  look  which  made  it  impossible  for 
him  to  insist.  Jean-Christophe  was  only  uneasy  on  one  point— 
that  he  might  be  asked  for  more  than  he  had.  He  would  have 
given  his  watch  and  everything  that  he  had  about  him  rather 
than  admit  it  to  Otto.  But  he  was  not  called  on  to  go  so  far. 
He  had  to  spend  on  the  dinner  almost  the  whole  of  his  month  s 
money. 

They  went  down  the  hill  again.  The  shades  of  evening  were 
beginning  to  fall  over  the  pine-woods.  Their  tops  were  still 
bathed  in  rosy  light;  they  swung  slowly  with  a surging  sound. 


146 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


The  carpet  of  purple  pine-needles  deadened  the  sound  of  their 
footsteps.  They  said  no  word.  Jean-Christophe  felt  a strange 
sweet  sadness  welling  through  his  heart.  He  was  happy;  he 
wished  to  talk,  but  was  weighed  down  with  his  sweet  sorrow. 
He  stopped  for  a moment,  and  so  did  Otto.  All  was  silence. 
Flies  buzzed  high  above  them  in  a ray  of  sunlight;  a rotten 
branch  fell.  Jean-Christophe  took  Otto’s  hand,  and  in  a trem- 
bling voice  said: 

“ Will  you  be  my  friend  ? ” 

Otto  murmured: 

« Yes.” 

They  shook  hands;  their  hearts  beat;  they  dared  hardly  look 
at  each  other. 

After  a moment  they  walked  on.  They  were  a few  paces 
away  from  each  other,  and  they  dared  say  no  more  until  they 
were  out  of  the  woods.  They  were  fearful  of  each  other,  and 
of  their  strange  emotion.  They  walked  very  fast,  and  never 
stopped  until  they  had  issued  from  the  shadow  of  the  trees; 
then  they  took  courage  again,  and  joined  hands.  They  mar- 
veled at  the  limpid  evening  falling,  and  they  talked  discon- 
nectedly. 

On  the  boat,  sitting  at  the  bows  in  the  brilliant  twilight, 
they  tried  to  talk  of  trivial  matters,  but  they  gave  no  heed 
to  what  they  were  saying.  They  were  lost  in  their  own  hap- 
piness and  weariness.  They  felt  no  need  to  talk,  or  to  hold 
hands,  or  even  to  look  at  each  other;  they  were  near  each 
other. 

When  they  were  near  their  journey’s  end  they  agreed  to  meet 
again  on  the  following  Sunday.  Jean-Christophe  took  Otto  to 
his  door.  Under  the  light  of  the  gas  they  timidly  smiled  and 
murmured  au  revoir.  They  were  glad  to  part,  so  wearied  were 
they  by  the  tension  at  which  they  had  been  living  for  those 
hours  and  by  the  pain  it  cost  them  to  break  the  silence  with 
a single  word. 

Jean-Christophe  returned  alone  in  the  night.  His  heart 
was  singing:  “I  have  a friend!  I have  a friend!”  He 
saw  nothing,  he  heard  nothing,  he  thought  of  nothing 
else. 

He  was  very  sleepy,  and  fell  asleep  as  soon  as  he  reached 


MOKNING  147 

his  room ; but  he  was  awakened  twice  or  thrice  during  the  night, 
as  by  some  fixed  idea.  He  repeated,  “ I "have  a friend,  and 
went  to  sleep  again  at  once. 

Next  morning  it  seemed  to  be  all  a dream.  To  test  the  reality 
of  it,  he  tried  to  recall  the  smallest  details  of  the  day.  He 
was  absorbed  by  this  occupation  while  he  was  giving  his  lessons, 
and  even  during  the  afternoon  he  was  so  absent  during  the 
orchestra  rehearsal  that  when  he  left  he  could  hardly  remember 
what  he  had  been  playing. 

When  he  returned  home  he  found  a letter  waiting  tor  him. 
He  had  no  need  to  ask  himself  whence  it  came.  He  ran  and 
shut  himself  up  in  his  room  to  read  it,  It  was  written  on  pale 
blue  paper  in  a labored,  long,  uncertain  hand,  with  very  correct 
flourishes : 

"Dear  Herr  Jeak-Christophe— dare  I say  Honored 
Friend  ? — 

"I  am  thinking  much  of  our  doings  yesterday,  and  I do 
thank  you  tremendously  for  your  kindness  to  me.  I am  so 
grateful  for  all  that  you  have  done,  and  for  your  kind  words, 
and  the  delightful  walk  and  the  excellent  dinner!  I am  only 
worried  that  you  should  have  spent  so  much  money  on  it. 
WTiat  a lovely  day!  Do  you  not  think  there  was  something 
providential  in  that  strange  meeting?  It  seems  to  me  that 
it  was  Fate  decreed  that  we  should  meet.  How  glad  I shall 
be  to  see  you  again  on  Sunday!  I hope  you  will  not  have  had 
too  much  unpleasantness  for  having  inissed  the  Hof  Mimic 
DireUor’s  dinner.  I should  be  so  sorry  if  you  had  any  trouble 
because  of  me. 

"Dear  Herr  Jean-Christophe,  I am  always 
“Your  very  devoted  servant  and  friend, 

" Otto  Diener. 

<(  p.  s. On  Sunday  please  do  not  call  for  me  at  home.  It 

would  be  better,  if  you  will,  for  us  to  meet  at  the  Schloss 
Garten/^ 

Jean-Christophe  read  the  letter  with  tears  in  his  eyes.  He 
kissed  it;  he  laughed  aloud;  he  jumped  about  on  his  bed.  Then 


148 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


he  ran  to  the  table  and  took  pen  in  hand  to  reply  at  once.  He 
could  not  wait  a moment.  But  he  was  not  used  to  writing. 
He  could  not  express  what  was  swelling  in  his  heart;  he  dug 
into  the  paper  with  his  pen,  and  blackened  his  fingers  with 
ink;  he  stamped  impatiently.  At  last,  by  dint  of  putting  out 
his  tongue  and  making  five  or  six  drafts,  he  succeeded  in  writ- 
ing in  malformed  letters,  which  fiew  out  in  all  directions,  and 
with  terrific  mistakes  in  spelling: 

Soul, — 

How  dare  you  speak  of  gratitude,  because  I love  you  ? Have 
I not  told  you  how  sad  I was  and  lonely  before  I knew  you? 
Your  friendship  is  the  greatest  of  blessings.  Yesterday  I was 
happy,  happy! — for  the  first  time  in  my  life.  I weep  for  joy 
as  I read  your  letter.  Yes,  my  beloved,  there  is  no  doubt 
that  it  was  Fate  brought  us  together.  Fate  wishes  that  we 
shotild  be  friends  to  do  great  things.  Friends!  The  lovely 
' word ! Can  it  be  that  at  last  I have  a friend  ? Oh ! you  will 
never  leave  me?  You  will  be  faithful  to  me?  Always!  always! 
. . . How  beautiful  it  will  be  to  grow  up  together,  to  work 
together,  to  bring  together — I my  musical  whimsies,  and  all 
the  crazy  things  that  go  chasing  through  my  mind;  you  your 
intelligence  and  amazing  learning!  How  much  you  know!  I 
have  never  met  a man  so  clever  as  you.  There  are  moments 
when  r am  uneasy.  I seem  to  be  unworthy  of  your  friendship. 
You  are  so  noble  and  so  accomplished,  and  I am  so  grateful 
to  you  for  loving  so  coarse  a creature  as  myself ! . . . But  no ! 
I have  just  said,  let  there  be  no  talk  of  gratitude.  In  friend- 
ship there  is  no  obligation  nor  benefaction.  I would  not  accept 
any  benefaction ! We  are  equal,  since  we  love.  How  impatient 
I am  to  see  you!  I will  not  call  for  you  at  home,  since  you 
do  not  wish  it — although,  to  tell  the  truth,  I do  not  understand 
all  these  precautions — ^but  you  are  the  wiser;  you  are  surely 
right.  . . . 

One  word  only ! No  more  talk  of  money.  I hate  money — 
the  word  and  the  thing  itself.  If  I am  not  rich,  I am  yet  rich 
enough  to  give  to  my  friend,  and  it  is  my  joy  to  give  all  I 
can  for  him.  Would  not  you  do  the  same?  And  if  I needed 
it,  would  you  not  be  the  first  to  give  me  all  your  fortune?  But 


MOENING 


149 


that  shall  never  be ! I have  sound  fists  and  a sound  head,  and 
I shall  always  be  ible  to  earn  the  bread  that  I eat.  Till  Sun- 
day! Dear  God,  a whole  week  without  seeing  you!  And  for 
two  days  I have  not  seen  you!  How  have  I been  able  to  live 
so  long  without  you? 

The  conductor  tried  to  grumble,  but  do  not  bother  about  it 
any  more  than  I do.  What  are  others  to  me?  I care  nothing 
what  they  think  or  what  they  may  ever  think  of  me.  Only 
you  matter.  Love  me  well,  my  soul;  love  me  as  I love  you! 
I cannot  tell  you  how  much  I love  you.  I am  yours,  yours, 
yours,  from  the  tips  of  my  fingers  to  the  apple  of  my 
eye. 

Yours  always, 

Jean-Christophe.’’ 

Jean-Christophe  was  devoured  with  impatience  for  the  rest 
of  the  week.  He  would  go  out  of  his  way,  and  make  long  turns 
to  pass  by  Otto^s  house.  Not  that  he  counted  on  seeing  him, 
but  the  sight  of  the  house  was  enough  to  make  him  grow  pale 
and  red  with  emotion.  On  the  Thursday  he  could  bear  it  no 
longer,  and  sent  a second  letter  even  more  high-fiown  than  the 
first.  Otto  answered  it  sentimentally. 

Sunday  came  at  length,  and  Otto  was  punctually  at  the  meet- 
ing-place. But  Jean-Christophe  had  been  there  for  an  hour, 
waiting  impatiently  for  the  walk.  He  began  to  imagine  dread- 
fully that  Otto  would  not  come.  He  trembled  lest  Otto  should 
be  ill,  for  he  did  not  suppose  for  a moment  that  Otto  might 
break  his  word.  He  whispered  over  and  over  again,  Dear 
God,  let  him  come — ^let  him  come ! and  he  struck  at  the  pebbles 
in  the  avenue  with  his  stick,  saying  to  himself  that  if  he 
missed  three  times  Otto  would  not  come,  but  if  he  hit  them 
Otto  would  appear  at  once.  In  spite  of  his  care  and  the 
easiness  of  the  test,  he  had  just  missed  three  times  when  he 
saw  Otto  coming  at  his  easy,  deliberate  pace;  for  Otto  was 
above  all  things  correct,  even  when  he  was  most  moved.  Jean- 
Christophe  ran  to  him,  and  with  his  throat  dry  wished  him 
Good-day ! Otto  replied,  Good-day ! and  they  found 
that  they  had  nothing  more  to  say  to  each  other,  except  that 
the  weather  was  fine  and  that  it  was  five  or  six  minutes  past 


150  JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 

ten,  or  it  migM  be  ten  past,  because  the  castle  clock  was  always 
slow. 

They  went  to  the  station,  and  went  by  rail  to  a neighboring 
place  which  was  a favorite  excursion  from  the  town.  On  the 
way  they  exchanged  not  more  than  ten  words.  They  tried  to 
make  up  for  it  by  eloquent  looks,  but  they  were  no  more  success- 
ful. In  vain  did  they  try  to  tell  each  other  what  friends  they 
were;  their  eyes  would  say  nothing  at  all.  They  were  just  play- 
acting. Jean-Christophe  saw  that,  and  was  humiliated.  He 
did  not  understand  how  he  could  not  express  or  even  feel  all 
that  had  filled  his  heart  an  hour  before.  Otto  did  not,  perhaps, 
so  exactly  take  stock  of  their  failure,  because  he  was  less  sin- 
cere, and  examined  himself  with  more  circumspection,  but  he 
was  just  as  disappointed.  The  truth  is  that  the  boys  had,  dur- 
ing their  week  of  separation,  blown  out  their  feelings  to  such  , 
a diapason  that  it  was  impossible  for  them  to  keep  them  actu-  , 
ally  at  that  pitch,  and  when  they  met  again  their  first  impression  ■ 
must  of  necessity  be  false.  They  had  to  break  away  from  it,  , 
but  they  could  not  bring  themselves  to  agree  to  it. 

All  day  they  wandered  in  the  country  without  ever  breaking ! 
through  the  awkwardness  and  constraint  that  were  upon  them. , 
It  was  a holiday.  The  inns  and  woods  were  filled  with  a rabble 
of  excursionists — ^little  bourgeois  families  who  made  a great 
noise  and  ate  everywhere.  That  added  to  their  ill-humor.  , 
They  attributed  to  the  poor  people  the  impossibility  of  again; 
finding  the  earelessness  of  their  first  walk,.  But  they  talked,  j 
they  took  great  pains  to  find  subjects  of  conversation;  theyl 
were  afraid  of  finding  that  they  had  nothing  to  say  to  each! 
other.  Otto  displayed  his  school-learning;  Jean-Christophe  en-; 
tered  into  technical  explanations  of  musical  compositions  and 
violin-playing.  They  oppressed  each  other;  they  crushed  each 
other  by  "talking;  and  they  never  stopped  talking,  trembling 
lest  they  should,  for  then  there  opened  before  them  abysses  of 
silence  which  horrified  them.  Otto  came  near  to  weeping,  and 
Jean-Christophe  was  near  leaving  him  and  running  away  as 
hard  as  he  could,  he  was  so  bored  and  ashamed. 

Only  an  hour  before  they  had  to  take  the  train  again  did 
they  thaw.  In  the  depths  of  the  woods  a dog  was  barking;  he 
was  hunting  on  his  own  account.  Jean-Christophe  proposed, 


B 


I 


MOENING  151 

that  they  should  hide  by  his  path  to  try  and  see  his  quarry. 

They  ran  into  the  midst  of  the  thicket.  The  dog  came  near  x 

them,  and  then  went  away  again.  They  went  to  right  and  left,  - 
went  forward  and  doubled.  The  barking  grew  louder;  the 
dog  was  choking  with  impatience  in  his  lust  for  slaughter.  He 
came  near  once  more.  J ean-Christophe  and  Otto,  lying  on  the 
dead  leaves  in  the  rut  of  a path,  waited  and  held  their  breath. 

The  iJarking  stopped ; the  dog  had  lost  the  scent.  They  heard  his 
yap  once  again  in  the  distance ; then  silence  came  upon  the 
woods.  Not  a sound,  only  the  mysterious  hum  of  millions  of 
crefatures,  insects,  and  creeping  things,  moving  unceasingly,  de- 
stroying the  forest— the  measured  breathing  of  death,  which 
neiver  stops.  The  boys  listened,  they  did  not  stir.  Just 
w^hen  they  got  up,  disappointed,  and  said,  “It  is  all  over; 

Me  will  not  come!”  a little  hare  plunged  out  of  the  thicket. 

He  came  straight  upon  them.  They  saw  him  at  the  same 
moment,  and  gave  a cry  of  joy.  The  hare  turned  in  his  tracks 
/and  jumped  aside.  They  saw  him  dash  into  the  brushwood 
/head  over  heels.  The  stirring  of  the  rumpled  leaves  vanished 
f away  like  a ripple  on  the  face  of  waters.  Although  they  were 
orry  for  having  cried  out,  the  adventure  filled  them  with  joy. 

They  rocked  with  laughter  as  they  thought  of  the  hare’s  terri- 
fied leap,  and  Jean-Christophe  imitated  it  grotesquely.  Otto 
did  the  same.  Then  they  chased  each  other.  Otto  was  the 
hare,  Jean-Christophe  the  dog.  They  plunged  through  woods 
and  meadows,  dashing  through  hedges  and  leaping  ditches.  A 
peasant  shouted  at  them,  because  they  had  rushed  over  a field 
of  rye.  They  did  not  stop  to  hear  him.  Jean-Christophe 
imitated  the  hoarse  barking  of  the  dog  to  such  perfection  that 
Otto  laughed  until  he  cried.  At  last  they  rolled  down  a slope, 
shouting  like  mad  things.  When  they  could  not  utter  another 
I sound  they  sat  up  and  looked  at  each  other,  with  tears  Cj. 
laughter  in  their  eyes.  They  were  quite  happy  and  pleased 
with  themselves.  They  were  no  longer  trying  to  play  the  heroic 
friend ; they  were  frankly  what  they  were  two  boys. 

They  came  back  arm-in-arm,  singing  senseless  songs,  and  yet, 
when  they  were  on  the  point  of  returning  to  the  town,  they 
thought  they  had  better  resume  their  pose,  and  under  the  last 
tree  of  the  woods  they  carved  their  initials  intertwined.  But 


152 


JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 


then  good  temper  had  the  better  of  their  sentimentality,  and 
in  the  train  they  shouted  with  laughter  whenever  they  looked 
at  each  other.  They  parted  assuring  each  other  that  they  had 
had  a hugely  delightful  {holossal  entzuchend)  day,,  and 
that  conviction  gained  with  them  when  they  were  alone  once 
more.  ^ I 

They  resumed  their  work  of  construction  more  patient',  and 
ingenious  even  than  that  of  the  bees,  for  of  a few  medic'^cre 
scraps  of  memory  they  fashioned  a marvelous  image  of  them- 
selves and  their  friendship.  After  having  idealized  each  otl|er 
during  the  week,  they  met  again  on  the  Sunday,  and  in  spite 
of  the  discrepancy  between  the  truth  and  their  illusion,  theby 
got  used  to  not  noticing  it  and  to  twisting  things  to  fit  in  witri 
their  desires.  1 . 

They  were  proud  of  being  friends.  The  very  contrast  of  their 
natures  brought  them  together.  Jean-Christophe  knew  nothing) 
so  beautiful  as  Otto.  His  fine  hands,  his  lovely  hair,  his  fresh  i 
complexion,  his  shy  speech,  the  politeness  of  his  manners,  and  v, 
his  scrupulous  care  of  his  appearance  delighted  him.  Otto  was  | 
subjugated  by  Jean-Christophe’s  brimming  strength  and  in-  | 
dependence.  Accustomed  by  age-old  inheritance  to  religious 
respect  for  all  authority,  he  took  a fearful  joy  in  the  cumpany 
of  a comrade  in  whose  nature  was  so  little  reverence  for  the  ; 
established  order  of  things.  He  had  a little  voluptuous  thrill  ; 
of  terror  whenever  he  heard  him  decry  every  reputation  in  the  | 
town,  and  even  mimic  the  Grand  Duke  himself.  Jean-Chris-  I 
tophe  knew  the  fascination  that  he  exercised  over  his  friend,  ! 
and  used  to  exaggerate  his  aggressive  temper.  Like  some  ] 
old  revolutionary,  he  hewed  away  at  social  conventions  and 
the  laws  of  the  State.  Otto  would  listen,  scandalized  and  ^ 
delighted.  He  used  timidly  to  try  and  join  in,  but  he  w^as 
always  careful  to  look  round  to  see  if  any  one  could  hear. 

Jean-Christophe  never  failed,  when  they  walked  together,  to 
leap  the  fences  of  a field  whenever  he  saw  a board  forbidding 
it,  or  he  would  pick  fruit  over  the  walls  of  private  grounds. 
Otto  was  in  terror  lest  they  should  be  discovered.  But  such 
feelings  had  for  him  an  exquisite  savor,  and  in  the  evening, 
when  he  had  returned,  he  would  think  himself  a hero.  He 


MO  iNING 


15a 


admired  Jean-Christophe  fearfully.  His  instinct  of  obedience 
found  a satisfying  quality  in  a friendship  in  which  he  had 
only  to  acquiesce  in  the  will  of  his  friend.  Jean-Christophe 
never  put  him  to  the  trouble  of  coming  to  a decision.  He 
decided  everything,  decreed  the  doings  of  the  day,  decreed  even 
the  ordering  of  life,  making  plans,  which  admitted  of  no  dis- 
cussion, for  Otto’s  future,  just  as  he  did  for  his  own  family. 
Otto  fell  in  with  them,  though  he  was  a little  put  aback  by  hear- 
ing Jean-Christophe  dispose  of  his  fortune  for  the  building  later 
on  of  a theater  of  his  own  contriving.  But,  intimidated  by  his 
friend’s  imperious  tones,  he  did  not  protest,  being  convinced 
also  by  his  friend’s  conviction  that  the  money  amassed  by 
Commerzienrath  Oscar  Diener  could  be  put  to  no  nobler  use. 
Jean-Christophe  never  for  a moment  had  any  idea  that  he 
might  be  violating  Otto’s  will.  He  was  instinctively  a despot, 
and*  never  imagined  that  his  friend’s  wishes  might  be  different 
from  his  own.  Had  Otto  expressed  a desire  different  from  his  own, 
he  would  not  have  hesitated  to  sacrifice  his  own  personal  prefer- 
ence. He  would  have  sacrificed  even  more  for  him.  He  was 
consumed  by  the  desire  to  run  some  risk  for  him.  He  wished 
passionately  that  there  might  appear  some  opportunity  of  put- 
ting his  friendship  to  the  test.  When  they  were  out  walking 
he  used  to  hope  that  they  might  meet  some  danger,  so  that  he 
might  fling  himself  forward  to  face  it.  He  would  have  loved 
to  die  for  Otto.  Meanwhile,  he  watched  over  him  with  a rest- 
less solicitude,  gave  him  his  hand  in  awkward  places,  as  though 
he  were  a girl.  He  was  afraid  that  he  might  be  tired,  afraid 
that  he  might  be  hot,  afraid  that  he  might  be  cold.  When 
they  sat  down  under  a tree  he  took  off  his  coat  to  put  it  about 
his  friend’s  shoulders;  when  they  walked  he  carried  his  cloak. 
He  would  have  carried  Otto  himself.  He  used  to  devour  him 
with  his  eyes  like  a lover,  and,  to  tell  the  truth,  he  was  in 
love. 

He  did  not  know  it,  not  knowing  yet  what  love  was.  But 
sometimes,  when  they  were  together,  he  was  overtaken  by  a 
strange  unease — the  same  that  had  choked  him  on  that  first 
day  of  their  friendship  in  the  pine-woods — and  the  blood  would 
rush  to  his  face  and  set  his  cheeks  aflame.  He  was  afraid.  By 
an  instinctive  unanimity  the  two  boys  used  furtively  to  separate 


154 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


and  rnn  away  from  each  other,  and  one  would  lag  behind  on 
the  road.  They  would  pretend  to  be  busy  looking  for  black- 
berries in  the  hedges,  and  they  did  not  know  what  it  was  that 
so  perturbed  them. 

But  it  was  in  their  letters  especially  that  their  feelings  flew 
high.  They  were  not  then  in  any  danger  of  being  contradicted 
by  facts,  and  nothing  could  check  their  illusions  or  intimidate 
them.  They  wrote  to  each  other  two  or  three  times  a week  in 
a passionately  lyric  style.  They  hardly  ever  spoke  of  real  hap- 
penings or  common  things;  they  raised  great  problems  in  an 
apocalyptic  manner,  which  passed  imperceptibly  from  enthusiasm 
to  despair.  They  called  each  other,  “My  blessing,  my  hope, 
my  beloved,  my  Self.”  They  made  a fearful  hash  of  the  word 
“ Soul.”  They  painted  in  tragic  colors  the  sadness  of  their 
lot,  and  were  desolate  at  having  brought  into  the  existence  of 
their  friend  the  sorrows  of  their  existence. 

“ I am  sorry,  my  love,^^  wrote  J ean-Christophe,  for  the  ^ 
pain  which  I bring  you.  I cannot  bear  that  you  should  suffer.  ; 
It  must  not  be.  I will  not  have  it.”  _ (He  underlined  the  words  ‘i 
with  a stroke  of  the  pen  that  dug  into  the  paper.)  “ If  you  t 
suffer,  where  shall  I find  strength  to  live?  I have  no  happi- ; 
ness  but  in  you.  Oh,  be  happy!  I will  gladly  take  all  the  ; 
burden  of  sorrow  upon  myself ! Think  of  me ! Love  me . 

I have  such  great  need  of  being  loved.  From  your  love  there  • 
comes  to  me  a warmth  which  gives  me  life.  If  you  knew  how 
I shiver ! There  is  winter  and  a biting  wind  in  my  heart.  I j 

embrace  your  soul.”  I 

“My  thought  kisses  yours,”  replied  Otto.  _ J 

“I  take  your  face  in  my  hands,”  was  Jean-Christophe’sl 
answer,  “and  what  I have  not  done  and  will  not  do  with  my' 
lips  I do  with  all  my  being.  I kiss  you  as  I love  you.  Pru- 
dence ! ” 

Otto  pretended  to  doubt  him. 

“ Do  you  love  me  as  much  as  I love  you  ? ” 

“0  God,”  wrote  Jean-Christophe,  “not  as  much,  but  ten, 
a hundred,  a thousand  times  more!  'V^at!  Do  you ^ not  feel 
it?  What  would  you  have  me  do  to  stir  your  heart? 

“ What  a lovely  friendship  is  ours ! ” sighed  Otto.  “ Was 
there  ever  its  like  in  history?  It  is  sweet  and  fresh  as  a 


MOENING  155 

dream.  If  only  it  does  not  pass  away!  If  you  were  to  cease 
to  love  me ! ” 

“ How  stupid  you  are,  my  beloved!  ” replied  Jean-Christophei 
“ Forgive  me,  but  your  weakling  fear  enrages  me.  How  can 
you  ask  whether  I shall  cease  to  love  you!  For  me  to  live 
is  to  love  you.  Death  is  powerless  against  my  love.  You  your- 
self could  do  nothing  if  you  wished  to  destroy  it.  Even  if  you 
betrayed  me,  even  if  you  rent  my  heart,  I should  die  with  a 
blessing  upon  you  for  the  love  with  which  you  fill  me.  Once 
for  all,  then,  do  not  be  uneasy,  and  vex  me  no  more  with  these 
cowardly  doubts ! ” 

But  a week  later  it  was  he  who  wrote: 

“ It  is  three  days  now  since  I heard  a word  fall  from  your 
lips.  I tremble.  Would  you  forget  me?  My  blood  freezes 
at  the  thought.  . . . Yes,  doubtless.  . . . The  other  day  only 
I saw  your  coldness  towards  me.  You  love  me  no  longer ! You 
are  thinking  of  leaving  me ! . . . Listen ! If  you  forget  me,, 
if  you  ever  betray  me,  I will  kill  you  like  a dog ! ” 

“You  do  me  wrong,  my  dear  heart,”  groaned  Otto.  “You 
draw  tears  from  me.  I do  not  deserve  this.  But  you  can  do* 
as  you  will.  You  have  such  rights  over  me  that,  if  you  were 
to  break  my  soul,  there  would  always  be  a spark  left  to  live 
and  love  you  always ! ” 

“Heavenly  powers!”  cried  Jean-Christophe.  “I  have  made 
my  friend  weep!  . . . Heap  insults  on  me,  beat  me,  trample 
me  underfoot ! I am  a wretch ! I do  not  deserve  your  love ! ” 

They  had  special  ways  of  writing  the  address  on  their  letters, 
of  placing  the  stamp — upside  down,  askew,  at  bottom  in  a 
corner  of  the  envelope — to  distinguish  their  letters  from  those 
which  they  wrote  to  persons  who  did  not  matter.  These  childish 
secrets  had  the  charm  of  the  sweet  mysteries  of  love. 

One  day,  a^  he  was  returning  from  a lesson,  Jean-Christophe 
saw  Otto  in  the  street  with  a boy  of  his  own  age.  They  were 
laughing  and  talking  familiarly.  Jean-Christophe  went  pale, 
and  followed  them  with  his  eyes  until  they  had  disappeared 
round  the  corner  of  the  street.  They  had  not  seen  him.  He 
went  home.  It  was  as  though  a cloud  had  passed  over  the  sun ; 
all  was  dark. 


/ 


156  JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 

When  they  met  on  the  following  Sunday,  Jean-Christophe 
said  nothing  at  first;  but  after  they  had  been  walking  for  half 
an  hour  he  said  in  a choking  voice : 

“ I saw  you  on  Wednesday  in  the  Koniggasse." 

“ Ah ! ” said  Otto. 

And  he  blushed. 

Jean-Christophe  went  on: 

“ You  were  not  alone.” 

“^No,”  said  Otto;  “I  was  with  some  one.” 

Jean-Christophe  swallowed  down  his  spittle  and  asked  in  a 
voice  which  he  strove  to  make  careless: 

“Who  was  it?” 

“My  cousin  Eranz.” 

“Ah!”  said  Jean-Christophe;  and  after  a moment:  “You 
have  never  said  anything  about  him  to  me.” 

“ He  lives  at  Eheinbach.” 

“ Do  you  see  him  often  ? ” 

“He  comes  here  sometimes.” 

“ And  you,  do  you  go  and  stay  with  him  ? ” 

“ Sometimes.” 

“ Ah ! ” said  Jean-Christophe  again. 

Otto,  who  was  not  sorry  to  turn  the  conversation,  pointed 
out  a bird  who  was  pecking  at  a tree.  They  talked  of 
other  things.  Ten  minutes  later  Jean-Christophe  broke  out 
again : 

“ Are  you  friends  with  him  ? ” 

“ With  whom  ? ” asked  Otto. 

(He  knew  perfectly  who  was  meant.) 

“ With  your  cousin.” 

“Yes.  Why?” 

“ Oh,  nothing  I ” 

Otto  did  not  like  his  cousin  much,  for  he  used  to  bother 
him  with  bad  jokes;  but  a strange  malign  instinct  made  him 
add  a few  moments  later: 

“ He  is  very  nice.” 

“ Who  ? ” asked  Jean-Christophe. 

(He  knew  quite  well  who  was  meant.) 

“ Franz.” 

Otto  waited  for  Jean-Christophe  to  say  something,  but  he 


MOENING  157 

seemed  not  to  have  heard.  He  was  cutting  a switch  from  a 
hazel-tree.  Otto  went  on: 

He  is  amusing.  He  has  all  sorts  of  stories.’^ 

Jean-Christophe  whistled  carelessly. 

Otto  renewed  the  attack : 

And  he  is  so  clever  . . . and  distinguished ! . . .” 

Jean-Christophe  shrugged  his  shoulders  as  though  to  say: 

What  interest  can  this  person  have  for  me  ? 

And  as  Otto,  piqued,  began  to  go  on,  he  brutally  cut  him 
short,  and  pointed  out  a spot  to  which  to  run. 

They  did  not  touch  on  the  subject  again  the  whole  after- 
noon, but  they  were  frigid,  affecting  an  exaggerated  politeness 
which  was  unusual  for  them,  especially  for  Jean-Christophe. 
The  words  stuck  in  his  throat.  At  last  he  could  contain  him- 
self no  longer,  and  in  the  middle  of  the  road  he  turned  to  Otto, 
who  was  lagging  five  yards  behind.  He  took  him  fiercely  by 
the  hands,  and  let  loose  upon  him : 

Listen,  Otto ! I will  not — I will  not  let  you  be  so  friendly 
with  Fr^nz,  because  . . . because  you  are  my  friend,  and  I 
will  not  let  you  love  any  one  more  than  me!  I will  not!  You 
see,  you  are  everything  to  me ! You  cannot  . . . you  must  not  f 
. . . If  I lost  you,  there  would  be  nothing  left  but  death. 
I do  not  know  what  I should  do.  I should  kill  myself ; I should 
kill  you!  No,  forgive  me!  . . 

Tears  fell  from  his  eyes. 

Otto,  moved  and  frightened  by  the  sincerity  of  such  grief, 
growling  out  threats,  made  haste  to  swear  that  he  did  not  and 
never  would  love  anybody  so  much  as  Jean-Christophe,  that 
Franz  was  nothing  to  him,  and  that  he  would  not  see  him 
again  if  Jean-Christophe  wished  it.  Jean-Christophe  drank 
in  his  words,  and  his  heart  took  new  life.  He  laughed  and 
breathed  heavily;  he  thanked  Otto  effusively.  He  was  ashamed 
of  having  made  such  a scene,  but  he  was  relieved  of  a great 
weight.  They  stood  face  to  face  and  looked  at  each  other,  not 
moving,  and  holding  hands.  They  were  very  happy  and  very 
much  embarrassed.  They  became  silent;  then  they  began  to 
talk  again,  and  found  their  old  gaiety.  They  felt  more  at  one 
than  ever. 

But  it  was  not  the  last  scene  of  the  kind.  Now  that  Otto 


158 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHB 


lelt  his  power  over  Jean-Christophe,  he  was  tempted  to  abuse 
it.  He  knew  his  sore  spot,  and  was  irresistibly  tempted  to 
place  his  finger  on  it.  Not  that  he  had  any  pleasure  in  Jean-  ■ 
Christophe’s  anger;  on  the  contrary,  it  made  him  unhappy — 
t)ut  he  felt  his  power  by  making  Jean-Christophe  suffer.  He 
was  not  bad;  he  had  the  soul  of  a girl. 

In  spite  of  his  promises,  he  continued  to  appear  arm  in 
arm  with  Franz  or  some  other  comrade.  They  made  a great 
noise  between  them,  and  he  used  to  laugh  in  an  affected  way. 
When  Jean-Christophe  reproached  him  with  it,  he  used  to  titter 
and  pretend  not  to  take  him  seriously,  until,  seeing  Jean-Chris- 
tophe’s  eyes  change  and  his  lips  tremble  with  anger,  he  would 
change  his  tone,  and  fearfully  promise  not  to  do  it  again,  and 
the  next  day  he  would  do  it.  Jean-Christophe  would  write 
him  furious  letters,  in  which  he  called  him; 

“ Scoundrel ! Let  me  never  hear  of  you  again ! I do  not 
know  you!  May  the  devil  take  you  and  all  dogs  of  your 
kidney!” 

But  a tearful  word  from  Otto,  or,  as  he  ever  did,  the  sending 


-of  a flower  as  a token  of  his  eternal  constancy,  was  enough  for  , 


Jean-Christophe  to  be  plunged  in  remorse,  and  to  write : , 

“My  angel,  I am  mad!  Forget  my  idiocy.  You  are  the  • 
best  of  men.  Your  little  finger  alone  is  worth  more  than  all  ; 
stupid  Jean-Christophe.  You  have  the  treasures  of  an  in- ; 
genuous  and  delicate  tenderness.  I kiss  your  flower  with  tears  : 
in  my  eyes.  It  is  there  on  my  heart.  I thrust  it  into  my] 
skin  with  blows  of  my  fist.  I would  that  it  could  make  me| 
bleed,  so  that  I might  the  more  feel  your  exquisite  goodness  . 

and  my  own  infamous  folly ! . . .”  ; 

But  they  began  to  weary  of  each  other.  It  is  false  to  pre- 
tend that  little  quarrels  feed  friendship.  Jean-Christophe  was 
sore  against  Otto  for  the  injustice  that  Otto  made  him  be 
guilty  of.  He  tried  to  argue  with  himself;  he  laid  the  blame 
upon  his  own  despotic  temper.  His  loyal  and  eager  nature, 
brought  for  the  first  time  to  the  test  of  love,  gave  itself  utterly, 
and  demanded  a gift  as  utter  without  the  reservation  of  one^ 
particle  of  the  heart.  He  admitted  no  sharing  in  friendship.;’:. 
Being  ready  to  sacrifice  all  for  his  friend,  he  thought  it  right^ 
and  even  necessary  that  his  friend  should  wholly  sacrifice  him- 


MOENING 


159 


self  and  everything  for  him.  But  he  was  beginning  to  feel 
that  the  world  was  not  built  on  the  model  of  his  own  inflexible 
character,  and  that  he  was  asking  things  which  others  could 
not  give.  Then  he  tried  to  submit.  He  blamed  himself,  he 
regarded  himself  as  an  egoist,  who  had  no  right  to  encroach 
upon  the  liberty  of  his  friend,  and  to  monopolize  his  affection. 
He  did  sincerely  endeavor  to  leave  him  free,  whatever  it  might 
cost  himself.  In  a spirit  of  humiliation  he  did  set  himself  to 
pledge  Otto  not  tp  neglect  Franz;  he  tried  to  persuade  himself 
that  he  was  glad  to  see  him  finding  pleasure  in  society  other 
than  his  own.  But  when  Otto,  who  was  not  deceived,  maliciously 
obeyed  him,  he  could  not  help  lowering  at  him,  and  then  he 
broke  out  again. 

If  necessary,  he  would  have  forgiven  Otto  for  preferring 
other  friends  to  himself;  but  what  he  could  not  stomach  was 
the  lie.  Otto  was  neither  liar  nor  hypocrite,  but  it  was  as  difficult 
for  him  to  tell  the  truth  as  for  a stutterer  to  pronounce  words. 
What  he  said  was  never  altogether  true  nor  altogether  false. 
Either  from  timidity  or  from  uncertainty  of  his  own  feelings 
he  rarely  spoke  definitely.  His  answers  were  equivocal,  and, 
above  all,  upon  every  occasion  he  made  mystery  and  was  secret 
in  a way  that  set  Jean-Christophe  beside  himself.  When  he 
was  caught  tripping,  or  was  caught  in  what,  according  to  the 
conventions  of  their  friendship,  was  a fault,  instead  of  admit- 
ting it  he  would  go  on  denying  it  and  telling  absurd  stories. 
One  day  Jean-Christophe,  exasperated,  struck  him.  He  thought 
it  must  be  the  end  of  their  friendship  and  that  Otto  would 
never  forgive  him ; but  after  sulking  for  a few  hours  Otto 
came  back  as  though  nothing  had  happened.  He  had  no  resent- 
ment for  Jean-Christophe’s  violence — perhaps  even  it  was  not 
unpleasing  to  him,  and  had  a certain  charm  for  him — and  yet 
he  resented  Jean-Christophe  letting  himself  be  tricked,  gulping 
down  all  his  mendacities.  He  despised  him  a little,  and  thought 
himself  superior.  Jean-Christophe,  for  his  part,  resented  Otto’s 
receiving  blows  without  revolting. 

They  no  longer  saw  each  other  wifh  the  eyes  of  those  first 
days.  Their  failings  showed  up  in  full  light.  Otto  found  Jean- 
Christophe’s  independence  less  charming.  Jean-Christophe  was 
a tiresome  companion  when  they  went  walking.  He  had  no  sort 


160 


JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 


of  concern  for  correctness.  He  nsed  to  dress  as  he  liked,  take 
off  his  coat,  open  his  waistcoat,  walk  with  open  collar,  roll  up 
his  shirt-sleeves,  put  his  hat  on  the  end  of  his  stick,  and  fling 
out  his  chest  in  the  air.  He  used  to  swing  his  arms  as  he 
walked,  whistle,  and  sing  at  the  top  of  his  voice.  He  used 
to  be  red  in  the  face,  sweaty,  and  dusty.  He  looked  like  a 
peasant  returning  from  a fair.  The  aristocratic  Otto  used  to 
be  mortifled  at  being  seen  in  his  company.  When  he  saw  a 
carriage  coming  he  used  to  contrive  to  lag  some  ten  paces 
behind,  and  to  look  as  though  he  were  walking  alone. 

Jean-Christophe  was  no  less  embarrassing  company  when  he 
began  to  talk  at  an  inn  or  in  a railway-carriage  when  they 
were  returning  home.  He  used  to  talk  loudly,  and  say  any- 
thing that  came  into  his  head,  and  treat  Otto  with  a disgusting 
familiarity.  He  used  to  express  opinions  quite  recklessly  con- 
cerning  people  known  to  everybody,  or  even  about  the  appear-  . 
ance  of  people  sitting  only  a few  yards  away  from  him,  or  he  ; 
would  enter  into  intimate  details  concerning  his  health  and  ] 
domestic  affairs.  It  was  useless  for  Otto  to  roll  his  eyes  and 
to  make  signals  of  alarm.  Jean-Christophe  seemed  not  to  1 
notice  them,  and  no  more  controlled  himself  than  if  he  had  « 
been  alone.  Otto  would  see  smiles  on  the  faces  of  his  neigh-  ; 
bors,  and  would  gladly  have  sunk  into  the  ground.  He  thought  ■ 
Jean-Christophe  coarse,  and  could  not  understand  how  he  could  *; 
ever  have  found  delight  in  him.  ' • 

What  was  most  serious  was  that  Jean-Christophe  was  just  as  | 
reckless  and  indifferent  concerning  all  the  hedges,  fences,  in-  I 
closures,  walls,  prohibitions  of  entry,  threats  of  fines,  Verbot  i 
of  all  sorts,  and  everything  that  sought  to  confine  his  liberty  j 
and  protect  the  sacred  rights  of  property  against  it.  Otto 
lived  in  fear  from  moment  to  moment,  and  all  his  protests 
were  useless.  Jean-Christophe  grew  worse  out  of  bravado. 

One  day,  when  Jean-Christophe,  with  Otto  at  his  heels,  was 
walking  perfectly  at  home  across  a private  wood,  in  spite  of, 
or  because  of,  the  walls  fortified  with  broken  bottles  which 
they  had  had  to  clear,  they  found  themselves  suddenly  face  to 
face  with  a gamekeeper,  who  let  Are  a volley  of  oaths  at  them, 
and  after  keeping  them  for  some  time  under  a threat  of  legal 
proceedings,  packed  them  off  in  the  most  ignominious  fashion. 


MOENING 


IGl 


Otto  did  not  shine  under  this  ordeal.  He  thought  that  he  was 
already  in  jail,  and  wept,  stupidly  protesting  that  he  had  gone 
in  by  accident,  and  that  he  had  followed  Jean-Christophe  with- 
out knowing  whither  he  was  going.  When  he  saw  that  he 
was  safe,  instead  of  being  glad,  he  bitterly  reproached  Jean- 
Christophe.  He  complained  that  Jean-Christophe  had  brought 
him  into  trouble.  Jean-Christophe  quelled  him  with  a look, 
and  called  him  Lily-liver ! There  was  a quick  passage  of 
words.  Otto  would  have  left  Jean-Christophe  if  he  had  known 
how  to  find  the  way  home.  He  was  forced  to  follow  him,  but 
they  affected  to  pretend  that  they  were  not  together. 

A storm  was  brewing.  In  their  anger  they  had  not  seen 
it  coming.  The  baking  countryside  resounded  with  the  cries 
of  insects.  Suddenly  all  was  still.  They  only  grew  aware 
of  the  silence  after  a few  minutes.  Their  ears  buzzed.  They 
raised  their  eyes;  the  sky  was  black;  huge,  heavy,  livid  clouds 
overcast  it.  They  came  up  from  every  side  like  a cavalry-charge. 
They  seemed  all  to  be  hastening  towards  an  invisible  point, 
drawn  by  a gap  in  the  sky.  Otto,  in  terror,  dare  not  tell  his 
fears,  and  Jean-Christophe  took  a malignant  pleasure  in  pre- 
tending not  to  notice  anything.  But  without  saying  a word 
they  drew  nearer  together.  They  were  alone  in  the  wide  coun- 
try. Silence.  Not  a wind  stirred, — hardly  a fevered  tremor 
that  made  the  little  leaves  of  the  trees  shiver  now  and  then. 
Suddenly  a whirling  wind  raised  the  dust,  twisted  the  trees 
and  lashed  them  furiously.  And  the  silence  came  again,  more 
terrible  than  before.  Otto,  in  a trembling  voice,  spoke  at 
last. 

It  is  a storm.  We  must  go  home.^^ 

Jean-Christophe  said: 

Let  us  go  home.^^ 

But  it  was  too  late.  A blinding,  savage  light  flashed,  the 
heavens  roared,  the  vault  of  clouds  rumbled.  In  a moment 
they  were  wrapped  about  by  the  hurricane,  maddened  by  the 
lightning,  deafened  by  the  thunder,  drenched  from  head  to 
foot.  They  were  in  deserted  country,  half  an  hour  from  the 
nearest  house.  In  the  lashing  rain,  in  the  dim  light,  came  the 
great  red  flashes  of  the  storm.  They  tried  to  run  but,  their 
wet  clothes  clinging,  they  could  hardly  walk.  Their  shoes 


162 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


slipped  on  their  feet,  the  water  trickled  down  their  bodies.  It 
was  difficult  to  breathe.  Otto’s  teeth  were  chattering,  and  he  was 
mad  with  rage.  He  said  biting  things  to  J ean-Christophe.  He 
wanted  to  stop;  he  declared  that  iUwas  dangerous  to  walk; 
he  threatened  to  sit  down  on  the  road,  to  sleep  on  the  soil  in 
the  middle  of  the  plowed  fields.  Jean-Christophe  made  no 
reply. ' He  went  on  walking,  blinded  by  the  wind,  the  rain, 
and  the  lightning;  deafened  by  the  noise;  a little  uneasy,  but 
unwilling  to  admit  it. 

And  suddenly  it  was  all  over.  The  storm  had  passed,  as  it 
had  come.  But  they  were  both  in  a pitiful  condition.  In  truth, 
Jean-Christophe  was,  as  usual,  so  disheveled  that  a little  more 
disorder  made  hardly  any  difference  to  him.  But  Otto,  so  neat, 
so  careful  of  his  appearance,  cut  a sorry  figure.  It  was  as 
though  he  had  just  taken  a bath  in  his  clothes,  and  Jean-  , 

Christophe,  turning  and  seeing  him,  could  not  help  roar-  , 

ing  with  laughter.  Otto  was  so  exhausted  that  he  could  not  ’ 

even  be  angry.  Jean-Christophe  took  pity  and  talked  gaily  | 

to  him.  Otto  replied  with  a look  of  fury.  Jean-Christophe 
made  him  stop  at  a farm.  They  dried  themselves  before  | 

a great  fire,  and  drank  hot  wine.  Jean-Christophe  thought  the  ^ 

adventure  funny,  and  tried  to  laugh  at  it;  but  that  was  not  ■ 

at  all  to  Otto’s  taste,  and  he  was  morose  and  silent  for  the  rest  ; 

of  their  walk.  They  came  back  sulking  and  did  not  shaken  , 

hands  when  they  parted.  i 

As  a result  of  this  prank  they  did  not  see  each  other  for  ] 

more  than  a week.  They  were  severe  in  their  judgment  of  I 

each  other.  But  after  indicting  punishment  on  themselves  by  | 

depriving  themselves  of  one  of  their  Sunday  walks,  they  got  j 

so  bored  that  their  rancor  died  away.  Jean-Christophe  made 
the  first  advances  as  usual.  Otto  condescended  to  meet  them, 
and  they  made  peace. 

In  spite  of  their  disagreement  it  was  impossible  for  them 
to  do  without  each  other.  They  had  many  faults;  they  w«re 
both  egoists.  But  their  egoism  was  naive ; it  knew  not  the 
self-seeking  of  maturity  which  makes  it  so  repulsive;  it  knew 
not  itself  even;  it  was  almost  lovable,  and  did  not  prevent  them 
from  sincerely  loving  each  other!  Young  Otto  used  to  weep^ 
on  his  pillow  as  he  told  himself  stories  of  romantic  devotion 


MOENING 


163 


of  which  he  was  the  hero ; he  used  to  invent  pathetic  adventures, 
in  which  he  was  strong,  valiant,  intrepid,  and  protected  Jean- 
Christophe,  whom  he  used  to  imagine  that  he  adored.  Jean- 
Christophe  never  saw  or  .heard  anything  beautiful  or  strange 
without  thinking : ''  If  only  Otto  were  here ! He  carried  the 
image  of  his  friend  into  his  whole  life,  and  that  image  used 
to  be  transfigured,  and  become  so  gentle  that,  in  spite  of  all 
that  he  knew  about  Otto,  it  used  to  intoxicate  him.  Certain 
words  of  Otto’s  which  he  used  to  remember  long  after  they 
were  spoken,  and  to  embellish  by  the  way,  used  to  make  him 
tremble  with  emotion.  They  imitated  each  other.  Otto  aped 
Jean-Christophe’s  manners,  gestures,  and  writing.  Jean-Chris- 
tophe  was  sometimes  irritated  by  the  shadow  which  repeated 
every  word  that  he  said  and  dished  up  his  thoughts  as  though 
they  were  its  own.  But  he  did  not  see  that  he  himself  was 
imitating  Otto,  and  copying  his  way  of  dressing,  walking,  and 
pronouncing  certain  words.  They  were  under  a fascination. 
They  were  infused  one  in  the  other;  their  hearts  were  over- 
flowing with  tenderness.  They  trickled  over  with  it  on  every 
side  like  a fountain.  Each  imagined  that  his  friend  was  the 
cause  of  it.  They  did  not  know  that  it  was  the  waking  of  their 
adolescence. 

Jean-Christophe,  who  never  distrusted  any  one,  used  to  leave 
his  papers  lying  about.  But  an  instinctive  modesty  made  him 
keep  together  the  drafts  of  the  letters  which  he  scrawled  to 
Otto,  and  the  replies.  But  he  did  not  lock  them  up;  he  just 
placed  them  between  the  leaves  of  one  of  his  music-books,  where 
he  felt  certain  that  no  one  would  look  for  them.  He  reckoned 
without  his  brothers’  malice. 

He  had  seen  them  for  some  time  laughing  and  whispering 
and  looking  at  him;  they  were  declaiming  to  each  other  frag- 
ments of  speech  which  threw  them  into  wild  laughter.  J ean- 
Christophe  could  not  catch  the  words,  and,  following  his  usual 
tactics  with  them,  he  feigned  utter  indifference  to  everything 
they  might  do  or  say.  A few  words  roused  his  attention;  he 
thought  he  recognized  them.  Soon  he  was  left  without  doubt 
that  they  had  read  his  letters.  But  when  he  challenged  Ernest 
and  Eodolphe,  who  were  calling  each  other  My  dear  soul,” 


164 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


with  pretended  earnestness,  he  could  get  nothing  from  them. 

The  little  wretches  pretended  not  to  understand,  and  said  that 

they  had  the  right  to  call  each  other  whatever  they  liked.  Jean- 

Christophe,  who  had  found  all  the  letters  in  their  places,  did 
not  insist  farther. 

Shortly  afterwards  he  caught  Ernest  in  the  act  of  thieving; 
the  little  beast  was  rummaging  in  the  drawer  of  the  chest  in 
which  Louisa  kept  her  money.  Jean-Christophe  shook  him, 
and  took  advantage  of  the  opportunity  to  tell  him  everything 
that  he  had  stored  up  against  him.  He  enumerated,  in  terms 
of  scant  courtesy,  the  misdeeds  of  Ernest,  and  it  was  not  a 
short  catalogue.  Ernest  took  the  lecture  in  bad  part ; he  replied 
impudently  that  Jean-Christophe  had  nothing  to  reproach  him 
with,  and  he  hinted  at  unmentionable  things  in  his  brother’s 
friendship  with  Otto.  Jean-Christophe  did  not  understand,  ^ 
birt  when  he  grasped  that  Otto  was  being  dragged  into  the  _ 
quarrel  he  demanded  an  explanation  of  Ernest.  The  boy  tit-  ^ 
tered;  then,  when  he  saw  Jean-Christophe  white  with  anger,  , 
he  refused  to  say  any  more.  Jean-Christophe  saw  that  he 
would  obtain  nothing  in  that  way;  he  sat  down,  shrugged  his  < 

shoulders,  and  affected  a profound  contempt  for  Ernest.  , 

Ernest,  piqued  by  this,  was  impudent  again;  he  set  himself  . 

to  hurt  his  brother,  and  set  forth  a litany  of  things  each  more  : 

cruel  and  more  vile  than  the  last.  J ean-Christophe  kept  a ^ 

tight  hand  on  himself.  When  at  last  he  did  understand,  he  : 

saw  red ; he  leaped  from  his  chair.  Ernest  had  no  time  to  cry  . 

out.  Jean-Christophe  had  hurled  himself  on  him,  and  rolled  | 

with  him  into  the  middle  of  the  room,  and  beat  his  head  against  ^ 

the  tiles.  On  the  frightful  cries  of  the  victim,  Louisa,  Mel-  . 

chior,  everybody,  came  running.  They  rescued  Ernest  in  a 
parlous  state.  Jean-Christophe  would  not  loose  his  prey , they 
had  to  beat  and  beat  him.  They  called  him  a savage  beast, 
and  he  looked  it.  His  eyes  were  bursting  from  his  head,  he 
was  grinding  his  teeth,  and  his  only  thought  was  to  hurl  him- 
self again  on  Ernest.  When  they  asked  him  what  had  happened, 
his  fury  increased,  and  he  cried  out  that  he  would  kill  him. 
Ernest  also  refused  to  tell. 

Jean-Christophe  could  not  eat  nor  sleep.  He  was  shaking 
with  fever,  and  wept  in  his  bed.  It  was  not  only  for  Otto 


MORNING 


165 


that  he  was  suffering.  A revolution  was  taking  place  in  him. 
Ernest  had  no  idea  of  the  hurt  that  he  had  been  able  to 
do  his  brother.  \Jean-Christophe  was  at  heart  of  a puritanical 
intolerance^  which  could  not  admit  the  dark  ways  of  life,  and 
was  discovering  them  one  by  one  with  horror.  At  fifteen,  with 
his  free  life  and  strong  instincts,  he  remained  strangely  simple. 
His  natural  purity  and  ceaseless  toil  had  protected  him.  His 
brother’s  words  had  opened  up  abyss  on  abyss  before  him.  Never 
would  he  have  conceived  such  infamies,  and  now  that  the  idea 
of  it  had  come  to  him,  all  his  joy  in  loving  and  being  loved 
was  spoiled.  Not  only  his  friendship  with  Otto,  but  friendship 
itself  was  poisoned. 

It  was  much  worse  when  certain  sarcastic  allusions  made 
him  think,  perhaps  wrongly,  that  he  was  the  object  of  tl^  un- 
wholesome curiosity  of  the  town,  and  especially,  when,  some 
time  afterwards,  Melchior  made  a remark  about  his  walks  with 
Otto.  Probably  there  was  no  malice  in  Melchior,  but  Jean- 
Christophe,  on  the  watch,  read  hidden  meanings  into  every 
word,  and  almost  he  thought  himself  guilty.  At  the  same  time 
Otto  was  passing  through  a similar  crisis. 

They  tried  still  to  see  each  other  in  secret.  But  it  was 
impossible  for  them  to  regain  the  carelessness  of  their  old 
relation.  Their  frankness  was  spoiled.  The  two  boys  who 
loved  each  other  with  a tenderness  so  fearful  that  they  had 
never  dared  exchange  a fraternal  kiss,  and  had  imagined  that 
there  could  be  no  greater  happiness  than  in  seeing  each  other, 
and  in  being  friends,  and  sharing  each  other’s  dreams,  now 
felt  that  they  were  stained  and  spotted  by  the  suspicion  of  evil 
minds.  They  came  to  see  evil  even  in  the  most  innocent  acts: 
a look,  a hand-clasp — they  blushed,  they  had  evil  thoughts. 
Their  relation  became  intolerable. 

Without  saying  anything  they  saw  each  other  less  often. 
They  tried  writing  to  each  other,  but  they  set  a watch  upon 
their  expressions.  Their  letters  became  cold  and  insipid.  They 
grew  disheartened.  Jean-Christophe  excused  himself  on  the 
ground  of  his  work,  Otto  on  the  ground  of  being  too  busy, 
and  their  correspondence  ceased.  Soon  afterwards  Otto  left 
for  the  University,  and  the  friendship  which  had  lightened  a 
few  months  of  their  lives  died  down  and  out. 


166 


JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 


And  also,  a new  love,  of  which  this  had  been  only  the  fore- 
runner, took  possession  of  Jean-Christophe’s  heart,  and  made 
every  other  light  seem  pale  by  its  side. 


Ill 

MINNA 

Foue  or  five  months  before  these  events  Fran  Josepha  von 
Kerich,  widow  of  Councilor  Stephan  von  Kerich,  had  left 
Berlin,  where  her  husband’s  duties  had  hitherto  detained  them, 
and  settled  down  with  her  daughter  in  the  little  Rhine  town, 
in  her  native  country.  She  had  an  old  house  with  a .large 
garden,  almost  a park,  which  sloped  down  to  the  river,  not 
far  from  Jean-Christophe’s  home.  From  his  attic  Jean-Chris- 
tophe  could  see  the  heavy  branches  of  the  trees  hanging  over 
the  walls,  and  the  high  peak  of  the  red  roof  with  its  mossy 
tiles.  A little  sloping  alley,  with  hardly  room  to  pass,  ran 
alongside  the  park  to  the  right;  from  there,  by  climbing  a post, 
you  could  look  over  the  wall.  Jean-Christophe  did  not  fail 
to  make  use  of  it.  He  could  then  see  the  grassy  avenues,  the 
lawns  like  open  meadows,  the  trees  interlacing  and  growing 
wild,  and  the  white  front  of  the  house  with  its  shutters  obsti- 
nately closed.  Once  or  twice  a year  a gardener  made  the  rounds, 
and  aired  the  house.  But  soon  Nature  resumed  her  sway  over 
the  garden,  and  silence  reigned  over  all. 

That  silence  impressed  Jean-Christophe.  He  used  often, 
stealthily  to  climb  up  to  his  watch-tower,  and  as  he  grew  taller, 
his  eyes,  then  his  nose,  then  his  mouth  reached  up  to  the  top  of 
the  wall;  now  he  could  put  his  arms  over  it  if  he  stood  on 
tiptoe,  and,  in  spite  of  the  discomfort  of  that  position,  he  used 
to  stay  so,  with  his  chin  on  the  wall,  looking,  listening,  while 
the  evening  unfolded  over  the  lawns  its  soft  waves  of  gold, 
which  lit  up  with  bluish  rays  the  shade  of  the  pines.  There  he 
could  forget  himself  until  he  heard  footsteps  approaching  in 
the  street.  The  night  scattered  its  scents  over  the  garden:  lilac 
in  spring,  acacia  in  summer,  dead  leaves  in  the  autumn.  When 
Jean-Christophe  was  on  his  way  home  in  the  evening  from  the 


MOEOTNG 


167 


Palace,  however  weary  he  might  be,  he  used  to  stand  by  the 
door  to  drink  in  the  delicious  scent,  and  it  was  hard  for  him 
to  go  back  to  the  smells  of  his  room.  And  often  he  had  played 
— when  he  used  to  play — in  the  little  square  with  its  tufts  of 
grass  between  the  stones,  before  the  gateway  of  the  house  of 
the  Kerichs.  On  each  side  of  the  gate  grew  a chestnut-tree 
a hundred  years  old;  his  grandfather  used  to  come  and  sit 
beneath  them,  and  smoke  his  pipe,  and  the  children  used  to 
use  the  nuts  for  missiles  and  toys. 

One  morning,  as  he  went  up  the  alley,  he  climbed  up  the 
post  as  usual.  He  was  thinking  of  other  things,  and  looked 
absently.  He  was  just  going  to  climb  down  when  he  felt  that 
there  was  something  unusual  about  it.  He  looked  towards  the 
house.  The  windows  w’ere  open;  the  sun  was  shining  into  them 
and,  although  no  one  was  to  be  seen,  the  old  place  seemed  to 
have  been  roused  from  its  fifteen  years^  sleep,  and  to  be  smiling 
in  its  awakening.  Jean-Christophe  went  home  uneasy  in  his 
mind. 

At  dinner  his  father  talked  of  what  was  the  topic  of  the 
neighborhood:  the  arrival  of  Frau  Kerich  and  her  daughter 
with  an  incredible  quantity  of  luggage.  The  chestnut  square 
was  filled  with  rascals  who  had  turned  up  to  help  unload,  the 
carts.  Jean-Christophe  was  excited  by  the  news,  which,  in  his 
limited  life,  was  an  important  event,  and  he  returned  to  his 
work,  trying  to  imagine  the  inhabitants  of  the  enchanted  house 
from  his  father’s  story,  as  usual  hyperbolical.  Then  he  became 
absorbed  in  his  work,  and  had  forgotten  the  whole  affair  when, 
just  as  he  was  about  to  go  home  in  the  evening,  he  remembered 
it  all,  and  he  was  impelled  by  curiosity  to  climb  his  watch- 
tower  to  spy  out  what  might  be  toward  within  the  walls.  He 
saw  nothing  but  the  quiet  avenue,  in  which  the  motionless  trees 
seemed  to  be  sleeping  in  the  last  rays  of  the  sun.  In  a few 
moments  he  had  forgotten  why  he  was  looking,  and  abandoned 
himself  as  he  always  did  to  the  sweetness  of  the  silence.  That 
strange  place — standing  erect,  perilously  balanced  on  the  top 
of  a post — was  meet  for  dreams.  Coming  from  the  ugly  alley, 
stuffy  and  dark,  the  sunny  gardens  were  of  a magical  radiance. 
His  spirit  wandered  freely  through  these  regions  of  harmony, 
and  music  sang  in  him;  they  lulled  him,  and  he  forgot  time 


168 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


and  material  things,  and  was  only  concerned  to  miss  none  of 
the  whisperings  of  his  heart. 

So  he  dreamed  open-eyed  and  open-mouthed,  and  he  could 
not  have  told  how  long  he  had  been  dreaming,  for  he  saw  noth- 
ing. Suddenly  his  heart  leaped.  In  front  of  him,  at  a bend 
in  an  avenue,  were  two  women’s  faces  looking  at  him. . One, 
a young  lady  in  black,  with  fine  irregular  features  and  fair  hair, 
tall,  elegant,  with  carelessness  and  indifference  in  the  poise  of 
her  head,  was  looking  at  him  with  kind,  laughing  eyes.  The 
other,  a girl  of  fifteen,  also  in  deep  mourning,  looked  as  though 
she  were  going  to  burst  out  into  a fit  of  wild  laughter;  she  was 
standing  a little  behind  her  mother,  who,  without  looking  at 
her,  signed  to  her  to  be  quiet.  She  covered  her  lips  with  her 
hands,  as  if  she  were  hard  put  to  it  not  to  burst  out  laughing. 
She  was  a little  creature  with  a fresh  face,  white,  pink,  and 
round-cheeked;  she  had  a plump  little  nose,  a plump  little 
mouth,  a plump  little  chin,  firm  eyebrows,  bright  eyes,  and  a 
mass  of  fair  hair  plaited  and  wound  round  her  head  in  a crown 
to  show  her  rounded  neck  and  her  smooth  white  forehead — a 
Cranach  face. 

Jean-Christophe  was  turned  to  stone  by  this  apparition.  He 
could  not  go  away,  but  stayed,  glued  to  his  post,  with  his  mouth 
wide  open.  It  was  only  when  he  saw  the  young  lady  coming 
towards  him  with  her  kindly  mocking  smile  that  he  wrenched 
himself  away,  and  jumped — tumbled — down  into  the  alley,  drag- 
ging with  him  pieces  of  plaster  from  the  wall.  He  heard  a kind 
voice  calling  him,  Little  boy ! ” and  a shout  of  childish  laugh- 
ter, clear  and  liquid  as  the  song  of  a bird.  He  found  himself 
in  the  alley  on  hands  and  knees,  and,  after  a moment’s  bewil- 
derment, he  ran  away  as  hard  as  he  could  go,  as  though  he  was 
afraid  of  being  pursued.  He  was  ashamed,  and  his  shame  kept 
bursting  upon  him  again  when  he  was  alone  in  his  room  at 
home.  After  that  he  dared  not  go  down  the  alley,  fearing 
oddly  that  they  might  be  lying  in  wait  for  him.  When  he  had 
to  go  by  the  house,  he  kept  close  to  the  walls,  lowered  his  head, 
and  almost  ran  without  ever  looking  back.  At  the  same  time 
he  never  ceased  to  think  of  the  two  faces  that  he  had  seen; 
he  used  to  go  up  to  the  attic,  taking  off  his  shoes  so  as  not 
to  be  heard,  and  to  feok  his  hardest  out  through  the  skylight 


MOENING 


16^ 


in  the  direction  of  the  Kerichs’  house  and  park,  although  he 
knew  perfectly  well  that  it  was  impossible  to  see  anything  but 
the  tops  of  the  trees  and  the  topmost  chimneys. 

About  a month  later,  at  one  of  the  weekly  concerts  of  the 
Hof  MusiJc  Verein,  he  was  playing  a concerto  for  piano  and 
orchestra  of  his  own  composition.  He  had  reached  the  last 
movement  v/hen  he  chanced  to  see  in  the  box  facing  him  Frau 
and  Fraulein  Kerich  looking  at  him.  He  so  little  expected 
to  see  them  that  he  was  astounded,  and  almost  missed  out  his 
reply  to  the  orchestra.  He  went  on  playing  mechanically  to 
the  end  of  the  piece.  When  it  was  finished  he  saw,  although 
he  was  not  looking  in  their  direction,  that  Frau  and  Fraulein 
Kerich  were  applauding  a little  exaggeratedly,  as  though  they 
wished  him  to  see  that  they  were  applauding.  He  hurried  away 
from  the  stage.  As  he  was  leaving  the  theater  he  saw  Frau 
Kerich  in  the  lobby,  separated  from  him  by  several  rows  of 
people,  and  she  seemed  to  be  waiting  for  him  to  pass.  It  wa& 
impossible  for  him  not  to  see  her,  but  he  pretended  not  to  do 
so,  and,  brushing  his  way  through,  he  left  hurriedly  by  the 
stage-door  of  the  theater.  Then  he  was  angry  with  himself, 
for  he  knew  quite  well  that  Frau  Kerich  meant  no  harm.  But 
he  knew  that  in  the  same  situation  he  would  do  the  same  again. 
He  was  in  terror  of  meeting  her  in  the  street.  Whenever  he 
saw  at  a distance  a figure  that  resembled  her,  he  used  to  turn 
aside  and  take  another  road. 

It  was  she  who  came  to  him.  She  sought  him  out  at  home. 

One  morning  when  he  came  back  to  dinner  Louisa  proudly 
told  him  that  a lackey  in  breeches  and  livery  had  left  a letter 
for  him,  and  she  gave  him  a large  black-edged  envelope,  on  the 
back  of  which  was  engraved  the  Kerich  arms.  Jean-Christophe 
opened  it,  and  trembled  as  he  read  these  words: 

Frau  Josepha  von  Kerich  requests  the  pleasure  of  Hof 
Musicus  Jean-Christophe  KraffFs  company  at  tea  to-day  at  half-^ 
past  five.^^ 

I shall  not  go,^^  declared  J ean-Christophe. 

What ! cried  Louisa.  I said  that  you  would  go.^^ 


170 


JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 


Jean-Christophe  made  a scene,  and  reproached  his  mother  | 
with  meddling  in  affairs  that  were  no  concern  of  hers.  * 

“ The  servant  waited  for  a reply.  I said  that  you  were  free 
to-day.  Yon  have  nothing  to  do  then.” 

In  vain  did  Jean-Christophe  lose  his  temper,  and  swear  that 
he  would  not  go;  he  could  not  get  out  of  it  now.  When  the  ’ 
appointed  time  came,  he  got  ready  fuming;  in  his  heart  of  = 
hearts  he  was  not  sorry  that  chance  had  so  done  violence  to 
his  whims. 

Frau  von  Kerich  had  had  no  difficulty  in  recognizing  in  the 
pianist  at  the  concert  the  little  savage  whose  shaggy  head  had 
appeared  over  her  garden  wall  on  the  day  of  her  arrival.  She 
had  made  inquiries  about  him  of  her  neighbors,  and  what  she 
learned  about  Jean-Christophe’s  family  and  the  boy’s  brave  and 
difficult  life  had  roused  interest  in  him,  and  a desire  to  talk  to 
him. 

Jean-Christophe,  trussed  up  in  an  absurd  coat,  which  made  ; 
him  look  like  a country  parson,  arrived  at  the  house  quite  ill  > 
with  shyness.  He  tried  to  persuade  himself  that  Frau  and  - 
Fraulein  Kerich  had  had  no  time  to  remark  his  features  on  the  | 
day  when  they  had  first  seen  him.  A servant  led  him  down  ■ ; 
a long  corridor,  thickly  carpeted,  so  that  his  footsteps  made  no  ; 
sound,  to  a room  with  a glass-paneled  door  which  opened  on  •; 
to  the  garden.  It  was  raining  a little,  and  cold;  a good  fire  ; 
was  burning  in  the  fireplace.  Near  the  window,  through  which  • 
he  had  a peep  of  the  wet  trees  in  the  mist,  the  two  ladies  were  j 
sitting.  Frau  Kerich  was  working  and  her  daughter  was  read-  j 
ing  a book  when  Jean-Christophe  entered.  When  they  saw  | 
him  they  exchanged  a sly  look.  • 

“ They  know  me  again,”  thought  J ean-Christophe,  abashed. 

He  bobbed  awkwardly,  and  went  on  bobbing.  :• 

Frau  von  Kerich  smiled  cheerfully,  and  held  out  her  | 
hand. 

Good-day,  my  dear  neighbor,”  she  said.  “ I am  glad  to 
see  you.  Since  I heard  you  at  the  concert  I have  been  wanting 
to  tell  you  how  much  pleasure  you  gave  me.  And  as  the  only 
way  of  telling  you  was  to  invite  you  here,  I hope  you  will  forgive 
me  for  having  done  so.” 

In  the  kindly,  conventional  words  of  welcome  there  was  so 


MOENING 


in 


much  cordiality,  in  spite  of  a hidden  sting  of  irony,  that  Jean- 
Christophe  grew  more  at  his  ease. 

“ They  do  not  know  me  again,”  he  thought,  comforted. 

Frau  von  Kerich  presented  her  daughter,  who  had  closed  her 
hook  and  was  looking  interestedly  at  Jean-Christophe. 

“ My  daughter  Minna,”  she  said.  “ She  wanted  so  much  to 
see  you.” 

“^But,  mamma,”  said  Minna,  “it  is  not  the  first  time  that 
we  have  seen  each  other.” 

And  she  laughed  aloud. 

“They  do  know  me  again,”  thought  Jean-Christophe,  crest- 
fallen. 

“True,”  said  Frau  von  Kerich,  laughing  too,  “you  paid 
us  a visit  the  day  we  came.” 

At  these  words  the  girl  laughed  again,  and  Jean-Christophe 
looked  so  pitiful  that  when  Minna  looked  at  him  she  laughed 
more  than  ever.  She  could  not  control  herself,  and  she  laughed 
until  she  cried.  Frau  von  Kerich  tried  to  stop  her,  but  she, 
too,  could  not  help  laughing,  and  Jean-Christophe,  in  spite  of 
his  constraint,  fell  victim  to  the  contagiousness  of  it.  Their 
merriment  was  irresistible;  it  was  impossible  to  take  offense 
at  it.  But  Jean-Christophe  lost  countenance  altogether  when 
Minna  caught  her  breath  again,  and  asked  him  whatever  he 
could  be  doing  on  the  wall.  She  was  tickled  by  his  uneasi- 
ness. He  murmured,  altogether  at  a loss.  Frau  von  Kerich 
came  to  his  aid,  and  turned  the  conversation  by  pouring  out 
tea. 

She  questioned  him  amiably  about  his  life.  But  he  did  not 
gain  confidence.  He  could  not  sit  down;  he  could  not  hold 
his  cup,  which  threatened  to  upset;  and  whenever  they  offered 
him  water,  milk,  sugar  or  cakes,  he  thought  that  he  had  to 
get  up  hurriedly  and  bow  his  thanks,  stiff,  trussed  up  in  his 
frock-coat,  collar,  and  tie,  like  a tortoise  in  its  shell,  not  daring 
and  not  being  able  to  turn  his  head  to  right  or  left,  and  over- 
whelmed by  Frau  von  Kerich’s  innumerable  questions,  and  the 
warmth  of  her  manner,  frozen  by  Minna’s  looks,  which  he  felt 
were  taking  in  his  features,  his  hands,  his  movements,  his 
clothes.  They  made  him  even  more  uncomfortable  by  trying 
to  put  him  at  his  ease — Frau  von  Kerich  by  her  fiow  of  words, 


173 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


Minna  by  the  coquettish  eyes  which  instinctively  she  made  at 
him  to  amuse  herself. 

Finally  they  gave  up  trying  to  get  anything  more  from  him 
than  bows  and  monosyllables,  and  Frau  von  Kerich,  who  had 
the  whole  burden  of  the  conversation,  asked  him,  when  she  was 
worn  out,  to  play  the  piano.  Much  more  shy  of  them  than  of 
a concert  audience,  he  played  an  adagio  of  Mozart.  But  his 
very  shyness,  the  uneasiness  which  was  beginning  to  fill  his 
heart  from  the  company  of  the  two  women,  the  ingenuous 
emotion  with  which  his  bosom  swelled,  which  made  him  happy 
and  unhappy,  were  in  tune  with  the  tenderness  and  youthful 
modesty  of  the  music,  and  gave  it  the  charm  of  spring.  Frau 
von  Kerich  was  moved  by  it;  she  said  so  with  the  exaggerated 
words  of  praise  customary  among  men  and  women  of  the  world ; 
she  was  none  the  less  sincere  for  that,  and  the  very  excess  of 
the  flattery  was  sweet  coming  from  such  charming  lips. 
Naughty  Minna  said  nothing,  and  looked  astonished  at  the  boy  ; 
who  was  so  stupid  when  he  talked,  but  was  so  eloquent  with  his  i 
fingers.  Jean-Christophe  felt  their  sympathy,  and  grew  bold 
under  it.  He  went  on  playing;  then,  half  turning  towards  \ 
Minna,  with  an  awkward  smile  and  without  raising  his  eyes,  he  ; 
said  timidly:  ! 

“This  is  what  I was  doing  on  the  wall.”  : 

He  played  a little  piece  in  which  he  had,  in  fact,  developed  . 
the  musical  ideas  which  had  come  to  him  in  his  favorite  spot  ^ 
as  he  looked  into  the  garden,  not,  be  it  said,  on  the  evening  i 
when  he  had  seen  Minna  and  Frau  von  Kerich— for  some  ) 
obscure  reason,  known  only  to  his  heart,  he  was  trying  to  per-  J 
suade  himself  that  it  was  so — ^but  long  before,  and  in  the  calm  i 
rhythm  of  the  andante  con  moto,  there  were  to  be  found  the 
serene  impression  of  the  singing  of  birds,  mutterings  of  beasts, 
and  the  majestic  slumber  of  the  great  trees  in  the  peace  of  the 
sunset. 

The  two  hearers  listened  delightedly.  When  he  had  finished 
Frau  von  Kerich  rose,  took  his  hands  with  her  usual  vivacity, 
and  thanked  him  effusively.  Minna  clapped  her  hands,  and  • 
cried  that  it  was  “ admirable,”  and  that  to  make  him  compose 
other  works  as  “ sublime  ” as  that,  she  would  have  a ladder 
placed  against  the  wall,  so  that  he  might  work  there  at  his 


MOENING 


173 


ease.  Frau  von  Kerich  told  Jean-Christophe  not  to  listen  to 
silly  Minna;  she  begged  him  to  come  as  often  as  he  liked  to 
her  garden,  since  he  loved  it,  and  she  added  that  he  need  never 
bother  to  call  on  them  if  he  found  it  tiresome. 

You  need  never  bother  to  come  and  see  us/^  added  Minna^ 
Only  if  you  do  not  come,  beware ! 

She  wagged  her  finger  in  menace. 

Minna  was  possessed  by  no  imperious  desire  that  Jean-Chris- 
tophe  should  come  to  see  her,  or  should  even  follow  the  rules 
of  politeness  with  regard  to  herself,  but  it  pleased  her  to  pro- 
duce a little  effect  which  instinctively  she  felt  to  be  charming. 

Jean-Christophe  blushed  delightedly.  Frau  von  Kerich  won 
him  completely  by  the  tact  with  which  she  spoke  of  his  mother 
and  grandfather,  whom  she  had  known.  The  warmth  and  kind- 
ness of  the  two  ladies  touched  his  heart;  he  exaggerated  their 
easy  urbanity,  their  worldly  graciousness,  in  his  desire  to  think 
it  heartfelt  and  deep.  He  began  to  tell  them,  with  his  naive 
trustfulness,  of  his  plans  and  his  wretchedness.  He  did  not 
notice  that  more  than  an  hour  had  passed,  and  he  jumped  with 
surprise  when  a servant  came  and  announced  dinner.  But 
his  confusion  turned  to  happiness  when  Frau  von  Kerich  told 
him.to  stay  and  dine  with  them,  like  the  good  friends  that  they 
were  going  to  be,  and  were  already.  A place  was  laid  for 
him  between  the  mother  and  daughter,  and  at  table  his  talents^ 
did  not  show  to  such  advantage  as  at  the  piano.  That  part 
of  his  education  had  been  much  neglected ; it  was  his  impression 
that  eating  and  drinking  were  the  essential  things  at  table, 
and  not  the  manner  of  them.  And  so  tidy  Minna  looked  at 
him,  pouting  and  a little  horrified. 

They  thought  that  he  would  go  immediately  after  supper. 
But  he  followed  them  into  the  little  room,  and  sat  with  them, 
and  had  no  idea  of  going.  Minna  stified  her  yawns,  and  made 
signs  to  her  mother.  He  did  not  notice  them,  because  he  was 
dumb  with  his  happiness,  and  thought  they  were  like  himself — 
because  Minna,  when  she  looked  at  him,  made  eyes  at  him  from 
habit — and  finally,  once  he  was  seated,  he  did  not  quite  know 
how  to  get  up  and  take  his  leave.  He  would  have  stayed  all 
night  had  not  Frau  von  Kerich  sent  him  away  herself,  without 
ceremony,  but  kindly. 


174  JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 

He  went,  carrying  in  his  heart  the  soft  light  of  the  brown 
eyes  of  Frau  von  Kerich  and  the  blue  eyes  of  Minna;  on  his 
hands  he  felt  the  sweet  contact  of  soft  fingers,  soft  as  flowers, 
and  a subtle  perfume,  which  he  had  never  before  breathed, 
enveloped  him,  bewildered  him,  brought  him  almost  to  swoon- 
ing. 


He  went  again  two  days  later,  as  was  arranged,  to  give 
Minna  a music-lesson.  Thereafter,  under  this  arrangement,  he 
went  regularly  twice  a week  in  the  morning,  and  very  often  he 
went  again  in  the  evening  to  play  and  talk. 

Frau  von  Kerich  was  glad  to  see  him.  She  was  a clever  and  - 
a kind  woman.  She  was  thirty-five  when  she  lost  her  husband,  | 
and  although  young  in  body  and  at  heart,  she  was  not  sorry 
to  withdraw  from  the  world  in  which  she  had  gone  far  since 
her  marriage.  Perhaps  she  left  it  the  more  easily  because  she  . 
had  found  it  very  amusing,  and  thought  wisely  that  she  could  ; 
not  both  eat  her  cake  and  have  it.  She  was  devoted  to  the  ; 
memory  of  Herr  von  Kerich,  not  that  she  had  felt  anything  i 
like  love  for  him  when  they  married;  but  good-fellowship  was  , 
enough  for  her;  she  was  of  an  easy  temper  and  an  affectionate  ; 


disposition.  ; 

She  had  given  herself  up  to  her  daughter’s  education;  but  , 
the  same  moderation  which  she  had  had  in  her  love,  held  in  . 
check  the  impulsive  and  morbid  quality  which  is  sometimes  in  j 
motherhood,  when  the  child  is  the  only  creature  upon  whom  j 
the  woman  can  expend  her  jealous  need  of  loving  and  being  < 
loved.  She  loved  Minna  much,  but  was  clear  in  her  judgment  < 
of  her,  and  did  not  conceal  any  of  her  imperfections  any  more  | 
than  she  tried  to  deceive  herself  about  herself.  Witty  and 
clever,  she  had  a keen  eye  for  discovering  at  a glance  the  weak- 
ness, and  ridiculous  side,  of  any  person ; she  took  great  pleasure  | 
in  it,  without  ever  being  the  least  malicious,  for  she  was  as  | 
indulgent  as  she  was  scoffing,  and  while  she  laughed  at  people 


she  loved  to  be  of  use  to  them.  , 

Young  Jean-Christophe  gave  food  both  to  her  kindness  and  « 
to  her  critical  mind.  During  the  first  days  of  her  sojourn  in 
the  little  town,  when  her  mourning  kept  her  out  of  society, 
Jean-Christophe  was  a distraction  for  her— primarily  by  his| 


MOENING 


175 


talent.  She  loved  music,  although  she  was  no  musician;  she 
found  in  it  a physical  and  moral  well-being  in  which  her 
thoughts  could  idly  sink  into  a pleasant  melancholy.  Sitting 
by  the  fire — while  Jean-Christophe  played — a book  in  her  hands, 
and  smiling  vaguely,  she  took  a silent  delight  in  the  mechani- 
cal movements  of  his  fingers,  and  the  purposeless  wanderings 
of  her  reverie,  hovering  among  the  sad,  sweet  images  of  the 
past. 

But  more  even  than  the  music,  the  musician  interested  her. 
She  was  clever  enough  to  be  conscious  of  Jean-Christophe’s 
rare  gifts,  although  she  was  not  capable  of  perceiving  his  really 
original  quality.  It  gave  her  a curious  pleasure  to  watch  the 
waking  of  those  mysterious  fires  which  she  saw  kindling  in 
him.  She  had  quickly  appreciated  his  moral  qualities,  his 
uprightness,  his  courage,  the  sort  of  Stoicism  in  him,  so  touch- 
ing in  a child.  But  for  all  that  she  did  not  view  him  the  less 
with  the  usual  perspicacity  of  her  sharp,  mocking  eyes.  His 
awkwardness,  his  ugliness,  his  little  ridiculous  qualities  amused 
her;  she  did  not  take  him  altogether  seriously;  she  did  not 
take  many  things  seriously.  Jean-Christophe’s  antic  outbursts, 
his  violence,  his  fantastic  humor,  made  her  think  sometimes 
that  he  was  a little  unbalanced;  she  saw  in  him  one  of  the 
Kraffts,  honest  men  and  good  musicians,  but  always  a little 
wrong  in  the  head. . Her  light  irony  escaped  J ean-Christophe ; 
he  was  conscious  only  of  Frau  von  Kerich’s  kindness.  He 
was  so  unused  to  any  one  being  kind  to  him!  Although  his 
duties  at  the  Palace  brought  him  into  daily  contact  with  the 
world,  poor  Jean-Christophe  had  remained  a little  savage,  un- 
tutored and  uneducated.  The  selfishness  of  the  Court  was  only 
concerned  in  turning  him  to  its  profit  and  not  in  helping  him  in 
any  way.  He  went  to  the  Palace,  sat  at  the  piano,  played,  and 
went  away  again,  and  nobody  ever  took  the  trouble  to  talk 
to  him,  except  absently  to  pay  him  some  banal  compliment. 
Since  his  grandfather’s  death,  no  one,  either  at  home  or  out- 
side, had  ever  thought  of  helping  him  to  learn  the  conduct  of 
life,  or  to  be  a man.  He  suffered  cruelly  from  his  ignorance 
and  the  roughness  of  his  manners.'  He  went  through  an  agony 
and  bloody  sweat  to  shape  himself  alone,  but  he  did  not  succeed. 
Books,  conversation,  example — all  were  lacking.  He  would  fain 


176 


JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 


1 


have  confessed  his  distress  to  a friend,  but  could  not  bring 
himself  to  do  so.  Even  with  Otto  he  had  not  dared,  because 
at  the  first  words  he  had  uttered,  Otto  had  assumed  a tone 
of  disdainful  superiority  which  had  burned  into  him  like  hot  ' 
iron. 

And  now  with  Frau  von  Kerich  it  all  became  easy.  Of  her 
own  accord,  without  his  having  to  ask  anything — it  cost  Jean- 
Christophe’s  pride  so  much! — she  showed  him  gently  what  he 
should  not  do,  told  him  what  he  ought  to  do,  advised  him  how 
to  dress,  eat,  walk,  talk,  and  never  passed  over  any  fault  of 
manners,  taste,  or  language ; and  he  could  not  be  hurt  by  it, 
so  light  and  careful  was  her  touch  in  the  handling  of  the  boy’s 
easily  injured  vanity.  She  took  in  hand  also  his  literary  educa- 
tion without  seeming  to  be  concerned  with  it;  she  never  showed 
surprise  at  his  strange  ignorance,  but  never  let  slip  an  oppor- 
tunity of  correcting  his  mistakes  simply,  easily,  as  if  it  were  , 
natural  for  him  to  have  been  in  error ; and,  instead  of  alarming  , 
him  with  pedantic  lessons,  she  conceived  the  idea  of  employing  ; 
their  evening  meetings  by  making  Minna  or  Jean-Christophe 
read  passages  of  history,  or  of  the  poets,  German  and  foreign.  | 
She  treated  him  as  a son  of  the  house,  with  a few  fine  shades  , , 
of  patronizing  familiarity  which  he  never  saw.  She  was  even 
concerned  with  his  clothes,  gave  him  new  ones,  knitted  him  ! 
a woolen  comforter,  presented  him  with  little  toilet  things,  and 
all  so  gently  that  he  never  was  put  about  by  her  care  or  her  ! 
presents.  In  short,  she  gave  him  all  the  little  attentions  and  j 
the  quasi-maternal  care  which  come  to  every  good  woman  in-  | 
stinctively  for  a child  who  is  intrusted  to  her,  or  trusts  himself  < 
to  her,  without  her  having  any  deep  feeling  for  it.  But  Jean-  ; 
Christophe  thought  that  all  the  tenderness  was  given  to  him 
personally,  and  he  was  filled  with  gratitude ; he  would  break 
out  into  little  awkward,  passionate  speeches,  which  seemed  a 
little  ridiculous  to  Frau  von  Kerich,  though  they  did  not  fail  to 
give  her  pleasure. 

With  Minna  his  relation  was  very  different.  When  Jean- 
Christophe  met  her  again  at  her  first  lesson,  he  was  still  in- 
toxicated by  his  memories  of  the  preceding  evening  and  of 
the  girl’s  soft  looks,  and  he  was  greatly  surprised  to  find  her 
an  altogether  different  person  from  the  girl  he  had  seen  only 


MOKNING 


177 


a few  hours  before.  She  hardly  looked  at  him,  and  did  not 
listen  to  what  he  said,  and  when  she  raised  her  eyes  to  him,  he 
saw  in  them  so  icy  a coldness  that  he  was  chilled  by  it.  He 
tortured  himself  for  a long  time  to  discover  wherein  lay  his 
offense.  He  had  given  none,  and  Minna^s  feelings  were  neither 
more  nor  less  favorable  than  on  the  preceding  day;  just  as  she 
had  been  then,  Minna  was  completely  indifferent  to  him.  If 
on  the  first  occasion  she  had  smiled  upon  him  in  welcome,  it 
was  from  a girPs  instinctive  coquetry,  who  delights  to  try  the 
power  of  her  eyes  on  the  first  comer,  be  it  only  a trimmed  poodle 
who  turns  up  to  fill  her  idle  hours.  But  since  the  preceding 
day  the  too-easy  conquest  had  already  lost  interest  for  her.  She 
had  subjected  Jean-Christophe  to  a severe  scrutiny,  and  she 
thought  him  an  ugly  boy,  poor,  ill-bred,  who  played  the  piano 
well,  though  he  had  ugly  hands,  held  his  fork  at  table  abomi- 
nably, and  ate  his  fish  with  a knife.  Then  he  seemed  .to  her 
very  uninteresting.  She  wanted  to  have  music-lessons  from 
him;  she  wanted,  even,  to  amuse  herself  with  him,  because  for 
the  moment  she  had  no  other  companion,  and  because  in  spite 
of  her  pretensions  of  being  no  longer  a child,  she  had  still 
in  gusts  a crazy  longing  to  play,  a need  of  expending  her 
superfluous  gaiety,  which  was,  in  her  as  in  her  mother,  still 
further  roused  by  the  constraint  imposed  by  their  mourning. 
But  she  took  no  more  account  of  Jean-Christophe  than  of  a 
domestic  animal,  and  if  it  still  happened  occasionally  during 
the  days  of  her  greatest  coldness  that  she  made  eyes  at  him, 
it  was  purely  out  of  forgetfulness,  and  because  she  was  thinking 
of  something  else,  or  simply  so  as  not  to  get  out  of  practice. 
And  when  she  looked  at  him  like  that,  Jean-Christophe’s  heart 
used  to  leap.  It  is  doubtful  if  she  saw  it ; she  was  telling  herself 
stories.  For  she  was  at  the  age  when  we  delight  the  senses 
with  sweet  fluttering  dreams.  She  was  forever  absorbed  in 
thoughts  of  love,  filled  with  a curiosity  which  was  only  innocent 
from  ignorance.  And  she  only  thought  of  love,  as  a well-taught 
young  lady  should,  in  terms  of  marriage.  Her  ideal  was  far 
from  having  taken  definite  shape.  Sometimes  she  dreamed 
of  marrying  a lieutenant,  sometimes  of  marrying  a poet,  prop- 
erly sublime,  a la  Schiller.  One  project  devoured  another 
and  the  last  was  always  welcomed  with  the  same  gravity  and 


178 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


just  the  same  amount  of  conviction.  For  the  rest,  all  of  them 
were  quite  ready  to  give  way  before  a profitable  reality,  for 
it  is  wonderful  to  see  how  easily  romantic  girls  forget  their 
dreams,  when  something  less  ideal,  but  more  certain,  appears 
before  them. 

As  it  was,  sentimental  Minna  was,  in  spite  of  ail,  calm  and 
cold.  In  spite  of  her  aristocratic  name,  and  the  pride  with 
which  the  ennobling  particle  filled  her,  she  had  the  soul  of  a 
little  German  housewife  in  the  exquisite  days  of  adolescence. 

Naturally  Jean-Christophe  did  not  in  the  least  understand 
the  complicated  mechanism — more  complicated  in  appearance 
than  in  reality — of  the  feminine  heart.  He  was  often  baffled 
by  the  ways  of  his  friends,  but  he  was  so  happy  in  loving  them 
that  he  credited  them  with  all  that  disturbed  and  made  him 
sad  with  them,  so  as  to  persuade  himself  that  he  was  as  much 
loved  by  them  as  he  loved  them  himself.  A word  or  an  affec- 
tionate look  plunged  him  in  delight.  Sometimes  he  was  so- 
bowled  over  by  it  that  he  would  burst  into  tears. 

Sitting  by  the  table  in  the  quiet  little  room,  with  Frau  von 
Kerich  a few  yards  away  sewing  by  the  light  of  the  lamp — 
Minna  reading  on  the  other  side  of  the  table,  and  no  one 
talking,  he  looking  through  the  half-open  garden-door  at  the 
gravel  of  the  avenue  glistening  under  the  moon,  a soft 
murmur  coming  from  the  tops  of  the  trees — ^his  heart  would 
be  so  full  of  happiness  that  suddenly,  for  no  reason,  he  would 
leap  from  his  chair,  throw  himself  at  Frau  von  Kerich’s  feet, 
seize  her  hand,  needle  or  no  needle,  cover  it  with  kisses,  press 
it  to  his  lips,  his  cheeks,  his  eyes,  and  sob.  Minna  would  raise 
her  eyes,  lightly  shrug  her  shoulders,  and  make  a face.  Frau 
von  Kerich  would  smile  down  at  the  big  boy  groveling  at  her 
feet,  and  pat  his  head  with  her  free  hand,  and  say  to  him  in 
her  pretty  voice,  affectionately  and  ironically ; 

“ Well,  well,  old  fellow ! What  is  it  ? ” 

Oh,  the  sweetness  of  that  voice,  that  peace,  that  silence,  that 
soft  air  in  which  were  no  shouts,  no  roughness,  no  violence, 
that  oasis  in  the  harsh  desert  of  life,  and — heroic  light  gilding 
with  its  rays  people  and  things — the  light  of  the  enchanted 
world  conjured  up  by  the  reading  of  the  divine  poets!  Goethe, 


MOENING  179 

Schiller,  Shakespeare,  springs  of  strength,  of  sorrow,  and  of 
love!  . . . 

Minna,  with  her  head  down  over  the  book,  and  her  face 
faintly  colored  by  her  animated  delivery,  would  read  in  her 
fresh  voice,  with  its  slight  lisp,  and  try  to  sound  important 
when  she  spoke  in  the  characters  of  warriors  and  kings.  Some- 
times Frau  von  Kerich  herself  would  take  the  book;  then  she 
would  lend  to  tragic  histories  the  spiritual  and  tender  gracious- 
ness of  her  own  nature,  but  most  often  she  would  listen,  lying 
back  in  her  chair,  her  never-ending  needlework  in  her  lap; 
she  would  smile  at  her  own  thoughts,  for  always  she  would 
€ome  back  to  them  through  every  book. 

Jean-Christophe  also  had  tried  to  read,  but  he  had  had  to 
give  it  up;  he  stammered,  stumbled  over  fhe  words,  skipped 
the  punctuation,  seemed  to  understand  nothing,  and  would  be 
so  moved  that  he  would  have  to  stop  in  the  middle  of  the  pathetic 
passages,  feeling  tears  coming.  Then  in  a tantrum  he  would 
throw  the  book  down  on  the  table,  and  his  two  friends  would 
burst  out  laughing.  . . . How  he  loved  them!  He  carried  the 
image  of  them  everywhere  with  him,  and  they  were  mingled 
with  the  persons  in  SJiakespeare  and  Goethe.  He  could  hardly 
distinguish  between  them.  Some  fragrant  word,  of  the  poets 
which  called  up  from  the  depths  of  his  being  passionate  emo- 
tions could  not  in  him  be  severed  from  the  beloved  lips  that 
had  made  him  hear  it  for  the  first  time.  Even  twenty  years 
later  he  could  never  read  Egmont  or  Eomeo,  or  see  them  played, 
without  there  leaping  up  in  him  at  certain  lines  the  memory 
of  those  quiet  evenings,  those  dreams  of  happiness,  and  the 
beloved  faces  of  Frau  von  Kerich  and  Minna. 

He  would  spend  hours  looking  at  them  in  the  evening  when 
they  were  reading;  in  the  night  when  he  was  dreaming  in  his 
bed,  awake,  with  his  eyes  closed;  during  the  day,  when  he  was 
dreaming  at  his  place  in  the  orchestra,  playing  mechanically 
with  his  eyes  half  closed.  He  had  the  most  innocent  tenderness 
for  them,  and,  knowing  nothing  of  love,  he  thought  he  was  in 
love.  But  he  did  not  quite  know  whether  it  was  with  the  mother 
or  the  daughter.  He  went  into  the  matter  gravely,  and  did 
not  know  which  to  choose.  And  yet,  as  it  seemed  to  him  that 
he  must  at  all  costs  make  his  choice,  he  inclined  towards  Frau 


180 


JEAJ^-CHEISTOPHE 


von  Kerich.  And  he  did  in  fact  discover,  as  soon  as  he  had 
made  up  his  mind  to  it,  that  it  was  she  that  lie  loved.  He 
loved  her  quick  eyes,  the  absent  smile  upon  her  half-open  lips, 
her  pretty  forehead,  so  young  in  seeming,  and  the  parting  to 
one  side  in  her  fine,  soft  hair,  her  rather  husky  voice,  with  its 
little  cough,  her  motherly  hands,  the  elegance  of  her  move- 
ments, and  her  mysterious  soul.  He  would  thrill  with  happi- 
ness when,  sitting  by  his  side,  she  would  kindly  explain  to 
him  the  meaning  of  some  passage  in  a book  which  he  did  not 
understand;  she  would  lay  her  hand  on  Jean-Christophe’s  shoul- 
der; he  would  feel  the  warmth  of  her  fingers,  her  breath  on 
his  cheek,  the  sweet  perfume  of ^ her  body;  he  would  listen  in 
ecstasy,  lose  all  thought  of  the  book,  and  understand  nothing 
at  all.  She  would  see  that  and  ask  him  to  repeat  what  she 
had  said ; then  he  would  say  nothing,  and  she  would  laughingly  , 
be  angry,  and  tap  his  nose  with  her  book,  telling  him  that 
he  would  always  be  a little  donkey.  To  that  he,  would  reply 
that  he  did  not  care  so  long  as  he  "was  her  little  donkey,  and  ; 
she  did  not  drive  him  out  of  her  house.  She  would  pretend  to 
make  objections;  then  she  would  say  that  although  he  was  an.  t 
ugly  little  donkey,  and  very  stupid,  she  would^  agree  to  keep  | 
him — and  perhaps  even  to  love. him— ^although  lid  was  good  for  ' 
nothing,  if  at  the  least  he  would  be  just  good.  Then  they  • 
would  both  laugh,  and  he  would  go  swimming  in  his  joy.  : 

When  he  discovered  that  he  loved  Frau  von  Kerich,  Jean-  | 
Christophe  broke  away  from  Minna.  He  was  beginning  to  be.  | 
irritated  by  her  coldness  and  disdain,  and  as,  by  dint  of  seeing  { 
her  often,  he  had  been  emboldened  little  by  little  to  resume  1 
his  freedom  of  manner  with  her,  he  did  not  conceal  his  exaspera- 
tion from  her.  She  loved  to  sting  him,  and  he  would  reply 
sharply.  They  were  always  saying  unkind  things  to  each  other, 
and  Frau  von  Kerich  only  laughed  at  them.  Jean-Christophe, 
who  never  got  the  better  in  such  passages  of  words,  used  some- 
times to  issue  from  them  so  infuriated  that  he  thought  he  de- 
tested Minna;  and  he  persuaded  himself  that  he  only  went  to 
her  house  again  because  of  Frau  von  Kerich. 

He  went  on  giving  her  music  lessons.  Twice  a week,  from 
nine  to  ten  in  the  morning,  he  superintended  the  girPs  scales 


MOENING 

and  exercises.  The  room  in  which  they  did  this  was  Minna's 
studio— an  odd  workroom,  which,  with  an  amusing  fidelity, 
reflected  the  singular  disorder  of  her  little  feminine  mind. 

On  the  table  were  little  figures  of  musical  cats— a whole 
orchestra — iine  playing  a violin,  another  the  violoncello— a little 
pocket-mirror,  toilet  things  and  writing  things,  tidily  arranged. 
On  the  shelves  were  tiny  busts  of  musicians- Beethoven  frown- 
ing, Wigner  with  his  velvet  cap,  and  the  Apollo  Belvedere. 
On  the  mantelpiece,  by  a frog  smoking  a red  pipe,  a paper 
fan  on  which  was  painted  the  Bayreuth  Theater.  On  the  two 
bookshelves  were  a few  books — Liibke,  Mommsen,  Schi  er. 
Sans  Famille,”  Jules  Verne,  Montaigne.  On  the  walls  large 
photographs  of  the  Sistine  Madonna,  and  pictures  by  Herkomer, 
edged  with  blue  and  green  ribbons.  There  was  also  a view  of 
a Swiss  hotel  in  a frame  of  silver  thistles;  and  above  all,  every- 
where in  profusion,  in  every  corner  of  the  room,  photographs 
of  officers,  tenors,  conductors,  girl-friends,  all  with  inscriptions, 
almost  all  with  verse — or  at  least  what  is  accepted  as  verse  in 
Germany.  In  the  center  of  the  room,  on  a marble  pillar,  waa^ 
enthroned  a bust  of  Brahms,  with  a beard ; and,  above  the  pianid. 
little  plush  monkeys  and  cotillion  trophies  hung  by  threads. 

Minna  would  arrive  late,  her  eyes  still  puffy  with  sleep, 
sulky ; she  would  hardly  reach  out  her  hand  to  Jean-Christophe, 
coldly  bid  him  good-day,  and,  without  a word,  gravely  and  with 
dignity  sit  down  at  the  Jiiano.  When  she  was  alone,  it  pleased 
her  to  play  interminable  scales^  for  that  allowed  her  agreeab  y 
to  prolong  her  half -somnolent  condition  and  the  dreams  which 
she  was  spinning  for  herself.  But  Jean-Christophe  would  com- 
pel her  to  fix  her  attention  on  difficult  exercises,  and  so  some- 
times she  would  avenge  herself  by  playing  them  as  badly  as 
she  could.  She  was  a fair  musician,  but  she  did  not  like  music 
— ^like  many  German  women.  But,  like  them,  she  thought  she. 
ought  to  like  it,  and  she  took  her  lessons  conscientiously  enough, 
except  for  certain  moments  of  diabolical  malice  indulged  in  t( 
enrage  her  master.  She  could  enrage  him  much  more  by  the 
icy  indifference  with  which  she  set  herself  to  her  task.  Bui 
the  worst  was  when  she  took  it  into  her  head  that  it  was  her 
duty  to  throw  her  soul  into  an  expressive  passage:  then  she 
would  become  sentimental  and  feel  nothing. 


JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 


oung  Jean-Christophe,  sitting  by  her  side  was  not  very 
polite.  He  never  paid  her  compliments — far  from  it.  She 
resented  that^,  and  never  let  any  remark  pass  without  answering 
it.  She  would  argue  about  everything  that  he  said,  and  when 
she  made  a mistake  she  would  insist  that  she  was  playing  what 
was  written.  He  would  get  cross,  and  they  would  go  on  ex- 
changing ungracious  words  and  impertinences.  With  her  eyes 
on  the  keys,  she  never  ceased  to  watch  Jean-Christophe  and 
enjoy  his  fury.  As  a relief  from  boredom  she  would  invent 
stupid  little  tricks,  with  no  other  object  than  to  interrupt  the 
lesson  and  to  annoy  Jean-Christophe.  She  would  pretend  to 
choke,  so  as  to  make  herself  interesting;  she  would  have  a 
fit  of  coughing,  or  she  would  have  something  very  important 
to  say  to  the  maid.  Jean-Christophe  knew  that  she  was  play- 
acting; and  Minna  knew  that  Jean-Christophe  knew  that  she 
was  play-acting;  and  it  amused  her,  for  Jean-Christophe  could 
not  tell  her  what  he  was  thinking. 

One  day,  when  she  was  indulging  in  this  amusement  and 
was  coughing  languidly,  hiding  her  mouth  in  her  handkerchief, 
if  she  were  on  the  point  of  choking,  but  in  reality  watching 
Jean-Christophe^s  exasperation  out  of  the  corner  of  her  eye, 
she  conceived  the  ingenious  idea  of  letting  the  handkerchief 
fall,  so  as  to  make  Jean-Christophe  pick  it  up,  which  he  did 
with  the  worst  grace  in  the  world.  She  rewarded  him  with 
a Thank  you ! in  her  grand  manner,  which  nearly  made  him 
explode. 

She  thought  the  game  too  good  not  to  be  repeated.  Next  day 
she  did  it  again.  Jean-Christophe  did  not  budge;  he  was  boil- 
ing with  rage.  She  waited  a moment,  and  then  said  in  an 
injured  tone : 

1^*  Will  you  please  pick  up  my  handkerchief?” 
Jean-Christophe  could  not  contain  himself. 

1 am  not  your  servant ! ” he  cried  roughly.  Pick  it  up 
ourself ! ” 

Minna  choked  with  rage.  She  got  up  suddenly  from  her  stool, 
iiich  fell  over. 

Oh,  this  is  too  much ! ” she  said,  and  angrily  thumped 
the  piano;  and  she  left  the  room  in  a fury. 

Jean-Christophe  waited.  She  did  not  come  back.  He  was 


MOENING 


183 


ashamed  of  what  he  had  done ; he  felt  that  he  had  behaved  like 
a little  cad.  And  he  was  at  the  end  of  his  tether  ; she  made 
fun  of  him  too  impudently ! He  was  afraid  lest  Minna  should 
complain  to  her  mother,  and  he  should  be  forever  banished  from 
Frau  von  Kerich’s  thoughts.  He  knew  not  what  to  do;  for  if 
he  was  sorry  for  his  brutality,  no  power  on  earth  would  have 
made  him  ask  pardon. 

He  came  again  on  the  chance  the  next  day,  although  he 
thought  that  Minna  would  refuse  to  take  her  lesson.  But 
Minna,  who  was  too  proud  to  complain  to  anybody  ^Minna, 
whose  conscience  was  not  shielded  against  reproach  appeared 
again,  after  making  him  wait  five  minutes  more  than  usual; 
and  she  sat  down  at  the  piano,  stiff,  upright,  without  turning 
her  head  or  saying  a word,  as  though  Jean-Christophe  no  longer 
existed  for  her.  But  she  did  not  fail  to  take  her  lesson,  and 
all  the  subsequent  lessons,  because  she  knew  very  well  that  Jean- 
Christophe  was  a fine  musician,  and  that  she  ought  to  learn 
to  play  the  piano  properly  if  she  wished  to  be — what  she  wished 
to  be— a well-bred  young  lady  of  finished  education. 

But  how  bored  she  was ! How  they  bored  each  other ! 

One  misty  morning  in  March,  when  little  flakes  of  snow 
were  flying,  like  feathers,  in  the  gray  air,  they  were  in  the 
studio.  It  was  hardly  daylight.  Minna  was  arguing,  as  usual, 
about  a false  note  that  she  had  struck,  and  pretending  that  it 
“was  written  so.”  Although  he  knew  perfectly  well  that  she 
was  lying,  Jean-Christophe  bent  over  the  book  to  look  at  the 
passage  in  question  closely.  Her  hand  was  on  the  rack,  and 
she  did  not  move  it.  His  lips  were  near  her  hand.  He  tried 
to  read  and  could  not;  he  was  looking  at  something  else— a 
thing  soft,  transparent,  like  the  petals  of  a flower.  Suddenly 
he  did  n6t  know  what  he  was  thinking  of — he  pressed  his  lips 
as  hard  as  he  could  on  the  little  hand. 

They  were  both  dumfounded  by  it.  He  flung  backwards; 
she  withdrew  her  hand— both  blushing.  They  said  no  word  ; 
they  did  not  look  at  each  other.  After  a moment  of  confused 
silence  she  began  to  play  again;  she  was  very  uneasy:  her 
bosom  rose  and  fell  as  though  she  were  under  some  weight: 
she  struck  wrong  note  after  wrong  note.  He  did  not  notice  it : 


184 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


he  was  more  uneasy  than  she.  His  temples  throbbed ; he  heard 
nothing;  he  knew  not  what  she  was  playing;  and,  to  break  the 
silence,  he  made  a few  random  remarks  in  a choking  voice. 
He  thought  that  he  was  forever  lost  in  Minna’s  opinion.  He 
was  confounded  by  what  he  had  done,  thought  it  stupid  and 
rude.  The  lesson-hour  over,  he  left  Minna  without  looking  at 
her,  and  even  forgot  to  say  good-bye.  She  did  not  mind.  She 
had  no  thought  now  of  deeming  Jean-Christophe  ill-mannered; 
and  if  she  made  so  many  mistakes  in  playing,  it  was  because 
all  the  time  she  was  watching  him  out  of  the  corner  of  her 
eye  with  astonishment  and  curiosity,  and — for  the  first  time — 
sympathy. 

When  she  was  left  alone,  instead  of  going  to  look  for  her 
mother  as  usual,  she  shut  herself  up  in  her  room  and  examined 
this  extraordinary  event.  She  sat  with  her  face  in  her  hands 
in  front  of  the  mirror.  Her  eyes  seemed  to  her  soft  and  gleam- 
ing. She  bit  gently  at  her  lip  in  the  effort  of  thinking.  And 
as  she  looked  complacently  at  her  pretty  face,  she  visualized 
the  scene,  and  blushed  and  smiled.  At  dinner  she  was  animated 
and  merry.  She  refused  to  go  out  at  once,  and  stayed  in  the 
drawing-room  for  part  of  the  afternoon;  she  had  some  work 
in  her  hand,  and  did  not  make  ten  stitches  without  a mistake, 
but  what  did  that  matter!  In  a corner  of  the  room,  with  her 
back  turned  to  her  mother,  she  smiled;  or,  under  a sudden 
impulse  to  let  herself  go,  she  pranced  about  the  room  and 
sang  at  the  top  of  her  voice.  Frau  von  Kerich  started  and 
called  her  mad.  Minna  fiung  her  arms  round  her  neck,  shak- 
ing with  laughter,  and  hugged  and  kissed  her. 

In  the  evening,  when  she  went  to  her  room,  it  was  a long 
time  before  she  went  to  bed.  She  went  on  looking  at  herself 
in  the  mirror,  trying  to  remember,  and  having  thought  all 
through  the  day  of  the  same  thing — ^thinking  of  nothing.  She 
undressed  slowly;  she  stopped  every  moment,  sitting  on  the 
bed,  trying  to  remember  what  Jean-Christophe  was  like.  It 
was  a Jean-Christophe  of  fantasy  who  appeared,  and  now  he 
did  not  seem  nearly  so  uncouth  to  her.  She  went  to  bed  and 
put  out  the  light.  Ten  minutes  later  the  scene  of  the  morning 
rushed  back  into  her  mind,  and  she  burst  out  laughing.  Her 
mother  got  up  softly  and  opened  the  door,  thinking  that,  against 


MOENING 


185 


orders,  she  was  reading  in  bed.  She  found  Minna  lying  quietly 
in  her  bed,  with  her  eyes  wide  open  in  the  dim  candlelight. 
What  is  it  ? ''  she  asked.  ''  What  is  amusing  you  ? '' 
Nothing,’'  said  Minna  gravely.  ''  I was  thinking.” 

You  are  very  lucky  to  find  your  own  company  so  amusing. 
But  go  to  sleep.” 

'^Yes,  mamma,”  replied  Minna  meekly.  Inside ' herself  she 
was  grumbling:  ''Go  away!  Do  go  away!”  until  the  door 
was  closed,  and  she  could  go  on  enjoying  her  dreams.  She 
fell  into  a sweet  drowsiness.  When  she  was  nearly  asleep,  ^e 
leaped  for  joy:  ^ 

" He  loves  me.  . . . What  happiness ! How  good  of  him  to 
love  me ! . . . How  I love  him ! ” 

She  kissed  her  pillow  and  went  fast  asleep. 

When  next  they  Avere  together  Jean-Christophe  was  surprised 
at  Minna’s  amiability.  She  gave  him  " Good-day,”  and  asked 
him  how  he  was  in  a very  soft  voice;  she  sat  at  the  piano, 
looking  wise  and  modest;  she  was  an  angel  of  docility.  There 
were  none  of  her  naughty  schoolgirl’s  tricks,  but  she  listened 
religiously  to  J ean-Christophe’s  remarks,  acknowledged  that 
they  were  right,  gave  little  timid  cries  herself  when  she  made  a 
mistake  and  set  herself  to  be  more  accurate.  Jean-Christophe 
could  not  understand  it.  In  a very  short  time  she  made 
i astounding  progress.  Not  only  did  she  play  better,  but  with 
musical  feeling.  Little  as  he  was  given  to  flattery,  he  had  to 
pay  her  a compliment.  She  blushed  with  pleasure,  and  thanked 
him  for  it  with  a look  tearful  with  gratitude.  She  took  pains 
with  her  toilet  for  him;  she  wore  ribbons  of  an  exquisite  shade; 
she  gave  Jean-Christophe  little  smiles  and  soft  glances,  which 
he  disliked,  for  they  irritated  him,  and  moved  him  to  the 
I depths  of  his  soul.  And  now  it  was  she  who  made  conversation, 

' but  there  was  nothing  childish  in  what  she  said;  she  talked 
gravely,  and  quoted  the  poets  in  a pedantic  and  pretentious 
way.  He  hardly  ever  replied;  he  was  ill  at  ease.  This  new 
Minna  that  he  did  not  know  astonished  and  disquieted  him. 

Always  she  watched  him.  She  was  waiting.  ...  For  what? 
. . . Did  she  know  herself?  . . . She  was  waiting  for  him  to 
do  it  again.  He  took  good  care  not  to,  for  he  was  convinced 


186 


JEAN-CHKISTOPHE 


that  he  had  behaved  like  a clod;  he  seemed  never  to  give  a i 
thought  to  it.  She  grew  restless,  and  one  day  when  he  was 
sitting  quietly  at  a respectful  distance  from  her  dangerous  little 
paws,  she  was  seized  with  impatience : with  a movement  so  quick 
that  she  had  no  time  to  think  of  it,  she  herself  thrust  her  little 
hand  against  his  lips.  He  was  staggered  by  it,  then  furious 
and  ashamed.  But  none  the  less  he  kissed  it  very  passionately. 
Her  naive  effrontery  enraged  him;  he  was  on  the  point  of 
leaving  her  there  and  then. 

But  he  could  not.  He  was  entrapped.  Whirling  thoughts  ’ 
rushed  in  his  mind ; he  could  make  nothing  of  them.  Like  mists 
ascending  from  a valley  they  rose  from  the  depths  of  his  heart. 

He  wandered  hither  and  thither  at  random  through  this  mist 
of  love,  and  whatever  he  did,  he  did  but  turn  round  and  round 
an  obscure  fixed  idea,  a Desire  unknown,  terrible  and  fascinat- 
ing as  a fiame  to  an  insect.  It  was  the  sudden  eruption  of  the 
blind  forces  of  Nature.  * 

They  passed  through  a period  of  waiting.  They  watched  ’ 
each  other,  desired  each  other,  were  fearful  of  each  other,  i 
They  were  uneasy.  But  they  did  not  for  that  desist  from  their  ^ 
little  hostilities  and  sulkinesses ; only  there  were  no  more  f amili-  \ 
arities  between  them;  they  were  silent.  Each  was  busy  con-  ; 
structing  their  love  in  silence.  • 

Love  has  curious  retroactive  effects.  As  soon  as  Jean-  1 
Christophe  discovered  that  he  loved  Minna,  he  discovered  at  the  j 
same  time  that  he  had  always  loved  her.  For  three  months  \ 
they  had  been  seeing  each  other  almost  every  day  without  ever  ] 

suspecting  the  existence  of  their  love.  But  from  the  day  when  1 

he  did  actually  love  her,  he  was  absolutely  convinced  that  he 
had  loved  her  from  all  eternity. 

It  was  a good,  thing  for  him  to  have  discovered  at  last  whom  ■ 
he  loved.  He  had  loved  for  so  long  without  knowing  whom ! 4 

It  was  a sort  of  relief  to  him,  like  a sick  man,  who,  suffering  | 
from  a general  illness,  vague  and  enervating,  sees  it  become  I 
definite  in  sharp  pain  in  some  portion  of  his  body.  Nothing  > 
is  more  wearing  than  love  without  a definite  object;  it  eats  | 
away  and  saps  the  strength  like  a fever.  A known  passion 
leads  the  mind  to  excess;  that  is  exhausting,  but  at  least  one 


MORNING 


187 


knows  why.  It  is  an  excess;  it  is  not  a wasting  away.  Any- 
thing rather  than  emptiness. 

Although  Minna  had  given  Jean-Christophe  good  reason  to 
believe  that  she  was  not  indifferent  to  him,  he  did  not  fail 
to  torture  himself  with  the  idea  that  she  despised  him.  They 
had  never  had  any  very  clear  idea  of  each  other,  but  this  idea 
had  never  been  more  confused  and  false  than  it  was  now;  it 
consisted  of  a series  of  strange  fantasies  which  could  never  be 
made  to  agree,  for  they  passed  from  one  extreme  to  the  other, 
endowing  each  other  in  turn  vnth  faults  and  charms  which  they 
did  not  possess — charms  when  they  were  parted,  faults  when 
they  were  together.  In  either  case  they  were  wide  of  the 
mark. 

They  did  not  know  themselves  what  they  desired.  For  Jean- 
Christophe  his  love  took  shape  as  that  thirst  for  tenderness,  im- 
perious, absolute,  demanding  reciprocation,  which  had  burned  in 
him  since  childhood,  which  he  demanded  from  others,  and  wished 
to  impose  on  them  by  will  or  force.  Sometimes  this  despotic 
desire  of  full  sacrifice  of  himself  and  others — especially  others, 
perhaps — was  mingled  with  gusts  of  a brutal  and  obscure  desire, 
which  set  him  whirling,  and  he  did  not  understand  it.  Minna, 
curious  above  all  things,  and  delighted  to  have  a romance,  tried 
to  extract  as  much  pleasure  as  possible  from  it  for  her  vanity 
and  sentimentality;  she  tricked  herself  whole-heartedly  as  to 
what  she  was  feeling.  A great  part  of  their  love  was  purely 
literary.  They  fed  on  the  books  they  had  read,  and  were  forever 
ascribing  to  themselves  feelings  which  they  did  not  possess. 

But  the  moment  was  to  come  when  all  these  little  lies  and 
small  egoisms  were  to  vanish  away  before  the  divine  light  of 
love.  A day,  an  hour,  a few  seconds  of  eternity.  . . . And  it 
was  so  unexpected!  . . . 

One  evening  they  were  alone  and  talking.  The  room  was 
growing  dark.  Their  conversation  took  a serious  turn.  They 
talked  of  the  infinite,  of  Life,  and  Death.  It  made  a larger 
frame  for  their  little  passion.  Minna  complained  of  her  loneli- 
ness, which  led  naturally  to  Jean-Christophe’s  answer  jthat  she 
was  not  so  lonely  as  she  thought. 

No,^^  she  said,  shaking  her  head.  That  is  only  words. 


188  JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 

Every  one  lives  for  himself ; no  one  is  interested  in  you ; nobody 
loves  you.”  j 

Silence. 

“ And  I ? ” said  Jean-Christophe  suddenly,  pale  with  emotion. 

Impulsive  Minna  jumped  to  her  feet,  and  took  his  hands. 

The  door  opened.  They  flung  apart.  Frau  von  Kerich 
entered.  Jean-Christophe  buried  himself  in  a book,  which  he 
held  upside  down.  Minna  bent  over  her  work,  and  pricked 
her  finger  with  her  needle. 

They  were  not  alone  together  for  the  rest  of  the  evening, 
and  they  were  afraid  of  being  left.  When  Frau  von  Kerich  got 
up  to  look  for  something  in  the  next  room,  Minna,  not  usually 
obliging,  ran  to  fetch  it  for  her,  and  Jean-Christophe  took 
advantage  of  her  absence  to  take  his  leave  without  saying  good- 
night to  her. 

Next  day  they  met  again,  impatient  to  resume  their  inter-  . 
rupted  conversation.  They  did  not  succeed.  Yet  circumstances  ; 
were  favorable  to  them.  They  went  a walk  with  Frau  von  ; 
Kerich,  and  had  plenty  of  opportunity  for  talking  as  much  as  r 
they  liked.  But  Jean-Christophe  could  not  speak,  and  he  was  j 
so  unhappy  that  he  stayed  as  far  away  as  possible  from  Minna.  ! 
And  she  pretended  not  to  notice  his  discourtesy;  but  she  was  ; 
piqued  by  it,  and  showed  it.  When  Jean-Christophe  did  at  ; 
last  contrive  to  utter  a few  words,  she  listened  icily ; he  had  j 
hardly  the  courage  to  finish  his  sentence.  They  were  coming  ^ 
to  the  end  of  the  walk.  Time  was  flying.  And  he  was  wretched  i 
at  not  having  been  able  to  make  use  of  it. 

A week  passed.  They  thought  they  had  mistaken  their  ^ 
feeling  for  each  other.  They  were  not  sure  but  that  they  had  • 
dreamed  the  scene  of  that  evening.  Minna  was  resentful  against  | 
Jean-Christophe.  Jean-Christophe  was  afraid  of  meeting  her  | 
alone.  They  were  colder  to  each  other  than  ever.  j 

A day  came  when  it  had  rained  all  morning  and  part  of  the  I 
afternoon.  They  had  stayed  in  the  house  without  speaking, 
reading,  yawning,  looking  out  of  the  window ; they  were  bored  |i 
and  cross.  About  four  o’clock  the  sky  cleared.  They  ran  intoP 
the  garden.  They  leaned  their  elbows  on  the  terrace  wall,  and^ 
looked  down  at  the  lawns  sloping  to  the  river.  The  earth  was! 
steaming ; a soft  mist  was  ascending  to  the  sun ; little  rain-^ 


MOENING 


189 


drops  glittered  on  the  grass;  the  smell  of  the  damp  earth  and 
the  perfume  of  the  flowers  intermingled;  around  them  buzzed 
a golden  swarm  of  bees.  They  were  side  by  side,  not  looking 
at  each  other;  they  could  not  bring  themselves  to  break  the 
silence.  A bee  came  up  and  clung  awkwardly  to  a clump  of 
wistaria  heavy  with  rain,  and  sent  a shower  of  water  down  on 
them.  They  both  laughed,  and  at  once  they  felt  that  they 
were  no  longer  cross  with  each  other,  and  were  friends  again. 
But  still  they  did  not  look  at  each  other.  Suddenly,  without 
turning  her  head,  she  took  his  hand,  and  said: 

Come ! 

She  led  him  quickly  to  the  little  labyrinth  with  itp  box- 
bordered  paths,  which  was  in  the  middle  of  the  grove.  They 
climbed  up  the  slope,  slipping  on  the  soaking  ground,  and 
the  wet  trees  shook  out  their  branches  over  them.  Near  the 
top  she  stopped  to  breathe. 

Wait  . . . wait  . . she  said  in  a low  voice,  trying  to 
take  breath. 

He  looked  at  her.  She  was  looking  away;  she  was  smiling, 
breathing  hard,  with  her  lips  parted;  her  hand  was  trembling 
in  Jean-Christophe^s.  They  felt  the  blood  throbbing  in  their 
linked  hands  and  their  trembling  Angers.  Around  them  all 
was  silent.  The  pale  shoots  of  the  trees  w^ere  quivering  in  the 
sun;  a gentle  rain  dropped  from  the  leaves  with  silvery  sounds, 
and  in  the  sky  were  the  shrill  cries  of  swallows. 

She  turned  her  head  towards  him;  it  was  a lightning  flash. 
She  flung  her  arms  about  his  neck;  he  flung  himself  into  her 
arms. 

Minna ! Minna ! My  darling ! . . .^^ 

I love  you,  J ean  Christophe ! I love  you ! 

They  sat  on  a wet  wooden  seat.  They  were  fllled  with  love, 
sweet,  profound,  absurd.  Everything  else  had  vanished.  No 
more  egoism,  no  more  vanity,  no  more  reservation.  Love,  love 
— that  is  what  their  laughing,  tearful  eyes  were  saying.  The 
cold  coquette  of  a girl,  the  proud  boy,  were  devoured  with  the 
need  of  self-sacriflce,  of  giving,  of  suffering,  of  dying  for  each 
other.  They  did  not  know  each  other;  they  were  not  the  same; 
everything  was  changed;  their  hearts,  their  faces,  their  eyes, 
gave  out  a radiance  of  the  most  touching  kindness  and  tender- 


190 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


ness.  Moments  of  purity,  of  self-denial,  of  absolute  giving  of  ; 
themselves,  which  through  life  will  never  return! 

After  a desperate  murmuring  of  words  and  passionate  prom-  i 
ises  to  belong  to  each  other  forever,  after  kisses  and  incoherent  ■ 
words  of  delight,  they  saw  that  it  was  late,  and  they  ran  back  ' 
hand  in  hand,  almost  falling  in  the  narrow  paths,  bumping 
into  trees,  feeling  nothing,  blind  and  drunk  with  the  joy 


When  he  left  her  he  did  not  go  home ; he  could  not  have  gone 
to  sleep.  He  left  the  town,  and  walked  over  the  fields;  he 
walked  blindly  through  the  night.  The  air  was  fresh,  the  coun-  ; 
try  djirk  and  deserted.  A screech-owl  hooted  shrilly.  Jean-  ; 
Christophe  went  on  like  a sleep-walker.  The  little  lights  of 
the  town  quivered  on  the  plain,  and  the  stars  in  the  dark  sky. 
He  sat  on  a wall  by  the  road  and  suddenly  burst  into  tears.  ■ 
He  did  not  know  why.  He  was  too  happy,  and  the  excess  of  . 
his  joy  was  compounded  of  sadness  and  delight ; there  was  in  ^ 
it  thankfulness  for  his  happiness,  pity  for  those  who  were  not  | 
happy,  a melancholy  and  sweet  feeling  of  the  frailty  of  things,  | 
the  mad  joy  of  living.  He  wept  for  delight,  and  slept  in  the  | 
midst  of  his  tears.  When  he  awoke  dawn  was  peeping.  White  | 
mists  floated  over  the  river,  and  veiled  the  town,  where  Minna,  ^ 
worn  out,  was  sleeping,  while  in  her  heart  was  the  light  of  her  ; 
smile  of  happiness.  ; 


They  contrived  to  meet  again  in  the  garden  next  morning  | 
and  told  their  love  once  more,  but  now  the  divine  unconscious-  ^ 
ness  of  it  all  was  gone.  She  was  a little  playing  the  part  | 


of  the  girl  in  love,  and  he,  though  more  sincere,  was  also 


playing  a part.  They  talked  of  what  their  life  should  be.  He 


regretted  his  poverty  and  humble  estate.  She  affected  to  be , ; 
generous,  and  enjoyed  her  generosity.  She  said  that  she  cared  | 
nothing  for  money.  That  was  true,  for  she  knew  nothing  a 
about  it,  having  never  known  the  lack  of  it.  He  promised  tbatl 
he  would  become  a great  artist;  that  she  thought  flne  and  amus-lj 
ing,  like  a novel.  She  thought  it  her  duty  to  behave  reallyl 
like  a woman  in  love.  She  read  poetry;  she  was  sentimental.| 
He  was  touched  by  the  infection.  He  took  pains  with  his  dress 
he  was  absurd;  he  set  a guard  upon  his  speech;  he  was  preten- 


MORNING 


191 


tious.  Frau  von  Kerich  watched  him  and  laughed,  and  asked 
herself  what  could  have  made  him  so  stupid. 

But  they  had  moments  of  marvelous  poetry,  and  these  would 
suddenly  burst  upon  them  out  of  dull  days,  like  sunshine  through 
a mist.  A look,  a gesture,  a meaningless  word,  and  they  were 
bathed  in  happiness;  they  had  their  good-byes  in  the  evening 
on  the  dimly-lighted  stairs,  and  their  eyes  would  seek  each 
other,  divine  each  other  through  the  half  darkness,  and  the 
thrill  of  their  hands  as  they  touched,  the  trembling  in  their 
voices,  all  those  little  nothings  that  fed  their  memory  at  night, 
as  they  slept  so  lightly  that  the  chiming  of  each  hour  would 
awake  them,  and  their  hearts  would  sing  “ I am  loved,”  like 
the  murmuring  of  a stream. 

They  discovered  the  charm  of  things.  Spring  smiled  with 
a marvelous  sweetness.  The  heavens  were  brilliant,  the  air  was 
soft,  as  they  had  never  been  before.  All  the  town — the  red 
roofs,  the  old  walls,  the  cobbled  streets — showed  with  a kindly 
charm  that  moved  Jean-Christophe.  At  night,  when  everybody 
was  asleep,  Minna  would  get  up  from  her  bed,  and  stand  by 
the  window,  drowsy  and  feverish.  And  in  the  afternoon,  when 
he  was  not  there,  she  would  sit  in  a swing,  and  dream,  with 
a book  on  her  knees,  her  eyes  half  closed,  sleepy  and  lazily 
happy,  mind  and  body  hovering  in  the  spring  air.  She  would 
spend  hours  at  the  piano,  with  a patience  exasperating  to  others, 
going  over  and  over  again  scales  and  passages  which  made  her 
turn  pale  and  cold  with  emotion.  She  would  weep  when  she 
heard  Schumann’s  music.  She  felt  full  of  pity  and  kindness 
for  all  creatures,  and  so  did  he.  They  would  give  money 
stealthily  to  poor  people  whom  they  met  in  the  street,  and  would 
then  exchange  glances  of  compassion;  they  were  happy  in  their 
kindness. 

To  tell  the  truth,  they  were  kind  only  by  fits  and  starts. 
Minna  suddenly  discovered  how  sad  was  the  humble  life  of 
devotion  of  old  Frida,  who  had  been  a servant  in  the  house 
since  her  mother’s  childhood,  and  at  once  she  ran  and  hugged 
her,  to  the  great  astonishment  of  the  good  old  creature,  who 
was  busy  mending  the  linen  in  the  kitchen.  But  that  did  not 
keep  her  from  speaking  harshly  to  her  a few  hours  later,  when 
Frida  did  not  come  at  once  on  the  sound  of  the  hell.  And 


192 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


Jean-Christophe,  who  was  consumed  with  love  for  all  humanity^ 
and  would  turn,  aside  so  as  not  to  crush  an  insect,  was  entirely 
indifferent  to  his  own  family.  By  a strange  reaction  he  was 
colder  and  more  curt  with  them  the  more  affectionate  he  was 
to  all  other  creatures ; he  hardly  gave  thought  to  them ; 
he  spoke  abruptly  to  them,  and  found  no  interest  in 
seeing  them.  Both  in  Jean-Christophe  and  Minna  their  kind- 
ness was  only  a surfeit  of  tenderness  which  overflowed  at  inter- 
vals to  the  benefit  of  the  first  comer.  Except  for  these  over- 
flowings they  were  more  egoistic  than  ever,  for  their  minds  were 
filled  only  with  the  one  thought,  and  everything  was  brought 
back  to  that. 

How  much  of  Jean-Christophe’s  life  was  filled  with  the  girPs 
face!  What  emotion  was  in  him  when  he  saw  her  white  frock 
in  the  distance,  when  he  was  looking  for  her  in  the  garden; 
when  at  the  theater,  sitting  a few  yards  away  from  their  empty  ' 
places,  he  heard  the  door  of  their  box  open,  and  the  mocking  | 
voice  that  he  knew  so  well;  when  in  some  outside  conversation 
the  dear  name  of  Kerich  cropped  up!  He  would  go  pale  and  t 
blush;  for  a moment  or  two  he  would  see  and  hear  nothing.  | 
And  then  there  would  be  a rush  of  blood  over  all  his  body,  ; 
the  assault  of  unknown  forces. 

The  little  German  girl,  naive  and  sensual,  had  odd  little  / 
tricks.  She  would  place  her  ring  on  a little  pile  of  flour,  and  ' 
he  w^ould  have  to  get  it  again  and  again  with  his  teeth  without  ( 
whitening  his  nose.  Or  she  would  pass  a thread  through  a 1 
biscuit,  and  put  one  end  of  it  in  her  mouth  and  one  in  his,  J 
and  then  they  had  to  nibble  the  thread  to  see  who  could  get  j 
to  the  biscuit  first.  Their  faces  would  come  together;  they  ‘ 
would  feel  each  others  breathing;  their  lips  would  touch,  and 
they  would  laugh  forcedly,  while  their  hands  would  turn  to 
ice.  Jean-Christophe  would  feel  a desire  to  bite,  to  hurt;  he 
would  fling  back,  and  she  would  go  on  laughing  forcedly.  They 
would  turn  away,  pretend  indifference,  and  steal  glances  at 
each  other. 

These  disturbing  games  had  a disquieting  attraction  for  them ; 
they  wanted  to  play  them,  and  yet  avoided  them.  Jean-Chris- 
tophe was  fearful  of  them,  and  preferred  even  the  constraint 
of  the  meetings  when  Frau  von  Kerich  or  some  one  else  was 


MOENING 


193 


present.  No  outside  presence  could  break  in  upon  the  converse 
of  their  loving  hearts;  constraint  only  made  their  love  sweeter 
and  more  intense.  Everything  gained  infinitely  in  value;  a 
word,  a movement  of  the  lips,  a glance  were  enough  to  make 
the  rich  new  treasure  of  their  inner  life  shine  through  the  dull 
veil  of  ordinary  existence.  They  alone  could  see  it,  or  so  they 
thought,  and  smiled,  happy  in  their  little  mysteries.  Their 
words  were  no  more  than  those  of  a drawing-room  conversation 
about  trivial  matters;  to  them  they  were  an  unending  song 
of  love.  They  read  the  most  fleeting  changes  in  their  faces 
and  voices  as  in  an  open  book;  they  could  have  read  as  well 
with  their  eyes  closed,  for  they  had  only  to  listen  to  their 
hearts  to  hear  in  them  the  echo  of  the  heart  of  the  beloved. 
They  were  full  of  confidence  in  life,  in  happiness,  in  themselves. 
Their  hopes  were  boundless.  They  loved,  they  were  loved, 
happy,  without  a shadow,  without  a doubt,  without  a fear  of 
the  future.  Wonderful  serenity  of  those  days  of  spring!  Not 
a cloud  in  the  sky.  A faith  so  fresh  that  it  seems  that  nothing 
can  ever  tarnish  it.  A joy  so  abounding  that  nothing  can  ever 
exhaust  it.  Are  they  living?  Are  they  dreaming?  Doubtless 
they  are  dreaming.  There  is  nothing  in  common  between  life 
and  their  dream — nothing,  except  in  that  moment  of  magic: 
they  are  but  a dream  themselves;  their  being  has  melted  away 
at  the  touch  of  love. 

It  was  not  long  before  Frau  von  Kerich  perceived  their  little 
intrigue,  which  they  thought  very  subtly  managed,  though  it  was 
very  clumsy.  Minna  had  suspected  it  from  the  moment  when 
her  mother  had  entered  suddenly  one  day  when  she  was  talking 
to  Jean-Christophe,  and  standing  as  near  to  him  as  she  could, 
and  on  the  click  of  the  door  they  had  darted  apart  as  quickly 
as  possible,  covered  with  confusion.  Frau  von  Kerich  had  pre- 
tended to  see  nothing.  Minna  was  almost  sorry.  She  would 
have  liked  a tussle  with  her  mother;  it  would  have  been  more 
romantic. 

Her  mother  took  care  to  give  her  no  opportunity  for  it;  she 
was  too  clever  to  be  anxious,  or  to  make  any  remark  about  it. 
But  to  Minna  she  talked  ironically  about  Jean-Christophe,  and 
made  merciless  fun  of  his  foibles;  she  demolished  him  in  a few 


194 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


words.  She  did  not  do  it  deliberately ; she  acted  upon  instinct,  ! 
with  the  treachery  natural  to  a woman  who  is  defending  her 
own.  It  was  useless  for  Minna  to  resist,  and  sulk,  and  be 
impertinent,  and  go  on  denying  the  truth  of  her  remarks ; there 
was  only  too  much  justification  for  them,  and  Frau  von  Kerich 
had  a cruel  skill  in  fiicking  the  raw  spot.  The  largeness  of 
Jean-Christophe^s  boots,  the  ugliness  of  his  clothes,  his  ill- 
brushed  hat,  his  provincial  accent,  his  ridiculous  way  of  bowing,  | 
the  vulgarity  of  his  loud-voicedness,  nothing  was  forgotten  which 
might  sting  Minna’s  vanity.  Such  remarks  were  always  simple 
and  made  by  the  way ; they  never  took  the  form  of  a set  speech, 
and  when  Minna,  irritated,  got  upon  her  high  horse  to  reply,  i 
Frau  von  Kerich  would  innocently  be  off  on  another  subject. 
But  the  blow  struck  home,  and  Minna  was  sore  under  it. 

She  began  to  look  at  Jean-Christophe  with  a less  indulgent 
eye.  He  was  vaguely  conscious  of  it,  and  uneasily  asked  her : 
Why  do  you  look  at  me  like  that?  ” ■ 

And  she  answered:  ' 

Oh,  nothing ! ” ^ 

But  a moment  after,  when  he  was  merry,  she  would  harshly  ■ 
reproach  him  for  laughing  so  loudly.  He  was  abashed;  he 
never  would  have  thought  that  he  would  have  to  take  care  not 
to  laugh  too  loudly  with  her:  all  his  gaiety  was  spoiled.  Or 
when  he  was  talking  absolutely  at  his  ease,  she  would  absently  : 

interrupt  him  to  make  some  unpleasant  remark  about  his  clothes,  ? 
or  she  would  take  exception  to  his  common  expressions  with  | 
pedantic  aggressiveness.  Then  he  would  lose  all  desire  to  talk, 
and  sometimes  would  be  cross.  Then  he  would  persuade  him-  > 
self  that  these  ways  which  so  irritated  him  were  a proof  of 
Minna’s  interest  in  him,  and  she  would  persuade  herself  also 
that  it  was  so.  He  would  try  humbly  to  do  better.  But  she 
was  never  much  pleased  with  him,  for  he  hardly  ever  succeeded. 

But  he  had  no  time — nor  had  Minna — to  perceive  the  change 
that  was  taking  place  in  her.  Easter  came,  and  Minna  had 
to  go  with  her  mother  to  stay  with  some  relations  near  Weimar. 

During  the  last  week  before  the  separation  they  returned 
to  the  intimacy  of  the  first  days.  Except  for  little  outbursts 
of  impatience  Minna  was  more  affectionate  than  ever.  On  the 
eve  of  her  departure  they  went  for  a long  walk  in  the  park; 


MORNING 


195 


she  led  Jean-Christophe  mysteriously  to  the  arbor,  and  put 
about  his  neck  a little  scented  bag,  in  which  she  had  placed 
a lock  of  her  hair;  they  renewed  their  eternal  vows,  and  swore 
to  write  to  each  other  every  day;  and  they  chose  a star  out 
of  the  sky,  and  arranged  to  look  at  it  every  evening  at  the 
same  time. 

The  fatal  day  arrived.  Ten  times  during  the  night  he  had 
asked  himself,  “ Where  will  she  be  to-morrow  ? ” and  now  he 
thought,  “ It  is  to-day.  This  morning  she  is  still  here ; to-night 
she  will  be  here  no  longer.”  He  went  to  her  house  before  eight 
o’clock.  She  was  not  up;  he  set  out  to  walk  in  the  park; 
he  could  not;  he  returned.  The  passages  were  full  of  boxes 
and  parcels;  he  sat  down  in  a corner  of  the  room  listening  for 
the  creaking  of  doors  and  floors,  and  recognizing  the  footsteps 
on  the  floor  above  him.  Frau  von  Kerich  passed,  smiled  as 
she  saw  him  and,  without  stopping,  threw  him  a mocking  good- 
day.  Minna  came  at  last ; she  was  pale,  her  eyelids  were  swollen ; 
she  had  not  slept  any  more  than  he  during  the  night.  She 
gave  orders  busily  to  the  servants;  she  held  out  her  hand  to 
Jean-Christophe,  and  went  on  talking  to  old  Frida.  She  was 
ready  to  go.  Frau  von  Kerich  came  back.  They  argued  about 
a hat-box.  Minna  seemed  to  pay  no  attention  to  Jean-Chris- 
tophe, who  was  standing,  forgotten  and  unhappy,  by  the  piano. 
She  went  out  with  her  mother,  then  came  back;  from  the  door 
she  called  out  to  Frau  von  Kerich.  She  closed  the  door.  They 
were  alone.  She  ran  to  him,  took  his  hand,  and  dragged  him 
into  the  little  room  next  door;  its  shutters  were  closed.  Then 
she  put  her  face  up  to  Jean-Christophe’s  and  kissed  him  wildly. 
With  tears  in  her  eyes  she  said: 

“ You  promise — you  promise  that  you  will  love  me  always  ? ” 

They  sobbed  quietly,  and  made  convulsive  efforts  to  choke 
their  sobs  do^vn  so  as  not  to  be  heard.  They  broke  apart  as 
they  heard  footsteps  approaching.  Minna  dried  her  eyes,  and 
resumed  her  busy  air  with  the  servants,  but  her  voice  trembled. 

He  succeeded  in  snatching  her  handkerchief,  which  she  had 
let  fall — her  little  dirty  handkerchief,  crumpled  and  wet  with 
her  tears. 

He  went  to  the  station  with  his  friends  in  their  carriage. 
Sitting  opposite  each  other  Jean-Christophe  and  Minna  hardly 


196  JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 

dared  look  at  each  other  for  fear  of  bursting  into  tears.  Their 
hands  sought  each  other,  and  clasped  until  they  hurt.  Frau 
von  Kerich  watched  them  with  quizzical  good-humor,  and 
seemed  not  to  see  anything.  The  time  arrived.  Jean-Chris- 
tophe  was  standing  by  the  door  of  the  train  when  it  began  to 
move,  and  he  ran  alongside  the  carriage,  not  looking  where 
he  was  going,  jostling  against  porters,  his  eyes  fixed  on  Minna’s 
eyes,  until  the  train  was  gone.  He  went  on  running  until  it 
was  lost  from  sight.  Then  he  stopped,  out  of  breath,  and 
found  himself  on  the  station  platform  among  people  of  no 
importance.  He  went  home,  and,  fortunately,  his  family  were 
all  out,  and  all  through  the  morning  he  wept. 

For  the  first  time  he  knew  the  frightful  sorrow  of  parting, 
an  intolerable  torture  for  all  loving  hearts.  The  world  is 
empty;  life  is  empty;  all  is  empty.  The  heart  is  choked;  it 
is  impossible  to  breathe;  there  is  mortal  agony;  it  is  difficult,  ; 
impossible,  to  live — especially  when  all  around  you  there  are  ! 
the  traces  of  the  departed  loved  one,  when  everything  about  ; 
you  is  forever  calling  up  her  image,  when  you  remain  in  the  j 
surroundings  in  which  you  lived  together,  she  and  you,  when  | 
it  is  a torment  to  try  to  live  again  in  the  same  places  the  i 
happiness  that  is  gone.  Then  it  is  as  though  an  abyss  were  j 
opened  at  your  feet;  you  lean  over  it;  you  turn  giddy;  you  I 
almost  fall.  You  fall.  You  think  you  are  face  to  face  with  | 
Death.  And  so  you  are;  parting  is  one  of  his  faces.  You  { 
watch  the  beloved  of  your  heart  pass  away ; life  is  effaced ; only  | 
a black  hole  is  left — nothingness. 

Jean-Christophe  went  and  visited  all  the  beloved  spots,  so  ^ 
as  to  suffer  more.  Frau  von  Kerich  had  left  him  the  key  of 
the  garden,  so  that  he  could  go  there  while  they  were  away. 
He  went  there  that  very  day,  and  was  like  to  choke  with  sorrow. 

It  seemed  to  him  as  he  entered  that  he  might  find  there  a little 
q£  who  was  gone ; he  found  only  too  much  of  her , her 
image  hovered  over  all  the  lawns ; he  expected  to  see  her  appear 
at  all  the  corners  of  the  paths;  he  knew  well  that  she  would 
not  appear,  but  he  tormented  himself  with  pretending  that  she 
might,  and  he  went  over  the  tracks  of  his  memories  of  love—  . 
the  path  to  the  labyrinth,  the  terrace  carpeted  with  wistaria,  | 


MOENING 


197 


the  seat  in  the  arbor,  and  he  inflicted  torture  on  himself  by 
saying : A week  ago  . . . three  days  ago  . . . yesterday,  it 
was  so.  Yesterday  she  was  here  . . . this  very  morning.  . . P 
He  racked  his  heart  with  these  thoughts  until  he  had  to  stop, 
choking,  and  like  to  die.  In  his  sorrow''  was  mingled  anger  with 
himself  for  having  wasted  all  that  time,  and  not  having  made 
use  of  it.  So  many  minutes,  so  many  hours,  when  he  had 
enjoyed  the  infinite  happiness  of  seeing  her,  breathing  her,  and 
feeding  upon  her.  And  he  had  not  appreciated  it!  He  had 
let  the  time  go  by  without  having  tasted  to  the  full  every  tiny 
moment!  And  now!  . . . Now  it  was  too  late.  . . . Irrepara- 
ble ! Irreparable ! 

He  went  home.  His  family  seemed  odious  to  him.  He  could 
not  bear  their  faces,  their  gestures,  their  fatuous  conversation, 
the  same  as  that  of  the  preceding  day,  the  same  as  that  of  all 
the  preceding  days — always  the  same.  They  went  on  living 
their  usual  life,  as  though  no  such  misfortune  had  come  to 
pass  in  their  midst.  And  the  town  had  no  more  idea  of  it 
than  they.  The  people  were  all  going  about  their  affairs,  laugh- 
ing, noisy,  busy;  the  crickets  were  chirping;  the  sky  was  bright. 
He  hated  them  all;  he  felt  himself  crushed  by  this  universal 
egoism.  But  he  himself  was  more  egoistic  than  the  whole 
universe.  Nothing  was  worth  while  to  him.  He  had  no  kind- 
ness. He  loved  nobody. 

He  passed  several  lamentable  days.  His  work  absorbed  him 
again  automatically:  but  he  had  no  heart  for  living. 

One  evening  w^hen  he  was  at  supper  with  his  family,  silent 
and  depressed,  the  postman  knocked  at  the  door  and  left  a 
letter  for  him.  His  heart  knew  the  sender  of  it  before  he  had 
seen  the  handwriting.  Four  pairs  of  eyes,  fixed  on  him  with 
undisguised  curiosity,  waited  for  him  to  read  it,  clutching  at 
the  hope  that  this  interruption  might  take  them  out  of  their 
usual  boredom.  He  placed  the  letter  by  his  plate,  and  would 
not  open  it,  pretending  carelessly  that  he  knew  what  it  was 
about.  But  his  brothers,  annoyed,  would  not  believe  it,  and 
went  on  prying  at  it;  and  so  he  was  in  tortures  until  the  meal 
was  ended.  Then  he  was  free  to  lock  himself  up  in  his  room. 
His  heart  was  beating  so  that  he  almost  tore  the  letter  as  he 
opened  it.  He  trembled  to  think  what  might  be  in  it;  but 


198 


JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 


as  soon  as  he  had  glanced  over  the  first  words  he  was  filled  with 
joy. 

A few  very  affectionate  words.  Minna  was  writing  to  him 
by  stealth.  She  called  him  “Dear  CJiristlein’’  and  told  him 
that  she  had  wept  much,  had  looked  at  the  star  every  evening, 
that  she  had  been  to  Frankfort,  which  was  a splendid  town, 
where  there  were  wonderful  shops,  but  that  she  had  never  both- 
ered about  anything  because  she  was  thinking  of  him.  She 
reminded  him  that  he  had  sworn  to  be  faithful  to  her,  and  not 
to  see  anybody  while  she  was  away,  so  that  he  might  think  only 
of  her.  She  wanted  him  to  work  all  the  time  while  she  was 
gone,  so  as  to  make  himself  famous,  and  her  too.  She  ended 
by  asking  him  if  he  remembered  the  little  room  where  they 
had  said  good-bye  on  the  morning  when  she  had  left  him:  she 
assured  him  that  she  would  be  there  still  in  thought,  and  that 
she  would  still  say  good-bye  to  him  in  the  same  way.  She 
signed  herself,  “ Eternally  yours ! Eternally ! . . .”  and  she  ■ 
had  added  a postscript  bidding  him  buy  a straw  hat  instead  of  i 
his  ugly  felt— all  the  distinguished  people  there  were  wearing  1 
them — a coarse  straw  hat,  with  a broad  blue  ribbon.  , 

Jean-Christophe  read  the  letter  four  times  before  he  could  i 
quite  take  it  all  in.  He  was  so  overwhelmed  that  he  could  not  ■ 
even  be  happy ; and  suddenly  he  felt  so  tired  that  he  lay  down 
and  read  and  re-read  the  letter  and  kissed  it  again  and  again.  ^ 
He  put  it  under  his  pillow,  and  his  hand  was  forever  making  ; 
sure  that  it  was  there.  An  ineffable  sense  of  weU-being  per-  j 
meated  his  whole  soul.  He  slept  all  through  the  night.  | 

His  life  became  more  tolerable.  He  had  ever  sweet,  soaring  : 
thoughts  of  Minna.  He  set  about  answering  her;  but  he  could  ^ 
not  write  freely  to  her;  he  had  to  hide  his  feelings:  that  was  i 
painful  and  difficult  for  him.  He  continued  clumsily  to  conceal 
his  love  beneath  formulae  of  ceremonious  politeness,  which  he 
always  used  in  an  absurd  fashion. 

When  he  had  sent  it  he  awaited  Minna’s  reply,  and  only 
lived  in  expectation  of  it.  To  win  patience  he  tried  to  go  for 
walks  and  to  read.  But  his  thoughts  were  only  of  Minna^ 
he  went  on  crazily  repeating  her  name  oyer  and  over  again; 
he  was  so  abject  in  his  love  and  worship  of  her  name  that  ;he 
carried  everywhere  with  him  a volume  of  Lessing,  because  tl^ 


MOENING 


199 


name  of  Mnaa occurT^  in  E,  and  every  day  when  he  left 

WthiSto  he  went  a long  distance  out  of  his  way  so  as  to 
pass  a mercery  shop,  on  whose  signboard  the  five  adored  letters 

were  written.  , i 

He  reproached  himself  for  wasting  time  when  she  liad  bid 

him  so  urgently  to  work,  so  as  to  make  her  famous.  The  naive 
vanity  of  her  request  touched  him,  as  a mark  of  her  confidence 
in  him.  He  resolved,  by  way  of  fulfilling  it,  to  write  a work 
which  should  be  not  only  dedicated,  but  consecrated,  to  her. 
He  could  not  have  written  any  other  at  that  time.  Har  y 
had  the  scheme  occurred  to  him  than  musical  ideas  rushed  in 
unon  him.  It  was  like  a flood  of  water  accumulated  in  a 
reservoir  for  several  months,  until  it  should  suddenly  rush  down, 
breaking  all  its  dams.  He  did  not  leave  his  room  for  a week. 
Louisa  left  his  dinner  at  the  door;  for  he  did  not  allow  even 

her  to  enter.  , . ■ rri,.. 

He  wrote  a quintette  for  clarionet  and  strings, 
movement  was  a poem  of  youthful  hope  and  desire;  the  last 
a lover’s  ioke,  in  which  Jean-Christophe’s  wild  humor  peeped 
out  But  the  whole  work  was  written  for  the  sake  of  the  second 
movement,  the  larghetto,  in  which  Jean-Christophe  had  depicted 
an  ardent  and  ingenuous  little  soul,  which  was,  or  was  meant 
to  be,  a portrait  of  Minna.  No  one  would  have  recognized  it, 
least  of  all  herself ; but  the  great  thing  was  that  it  was  perfectly 
recognizable  to  himself;  and  he  had  a thrill  of  pleasure  in  the 
illusion  of  feeling  that  he  had  caught  the  essence  of  his  beloved. 
No  work  had  ever  been  so  easily  or  happily  written;  it  was  an 
outlet  for  the  excess  of  love  which  the  parting  had  stored  up 
in  him;  and  at  the  same  time  his  care  for  the  work  of  art,  the 
effort  necessary  to  dominate  and  concentrate  his  passion  into 
a beautiful  and  clear  form,  gave  him  a healthiness  of  mind,  a 
balance  in  his  faculties,  which  gave  him  a sort  of  physical 
delight — a sovereign  enjoyment  known  to  every  creative  artist. 
While  he  is  creating  he  escapes  altogether  from  the  slavery  ot 
desire  and  sorrow ; he  becomes  then  master  in  his  turn ; and 
all  that  gave  him  joy  or  suffering  seems  then  to  him  to  be 
only  the  fine  play  of  his  will.  Such  moments  are  too  short; 
for  when  they  are  done  he  finds  about  him,  more  heavy  an 
ever,  the  chains  of  reality. 


300  JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 

While  Jean-Christophe  was  busy  with  his  work  he  hardly  had 
time  to  think  of  his  parting  from  Minna;  he  was  living  with 
her.  Minna  was  no  longer  in  Minna;  she  was  in  himself.  But 
when  he  had  finished  he  found  that  he  was  alone,  more  alone 
than  before,  more  weary,  exhausted  by  the  effort;  he  remembered 
that  it  was  a fortnight  since  he  had  written  to  Minna  and  that 
she  had  not  replied. 

He  wrote  to  her  again,  and  this  time  he  could  not  bring 
himself  altogether  to  exercise  the  constraint  which  he  had  im- 
posed on  himself  for  the  first  letter.  He  reproached  Minna 
jocularly— for  he  did  not  believe  it  himself — with  having  for- 
gotten him.  He  scolded  her  for  her  laziness  and  teased  her 
affectionately.  He  spoke  of  his  work  with  much  mystery,  so 
as  to  rouse  her  curiosity,  and  because  he  wished  to  keep  it 
as  a surprise  for  her  when  she  returned.  He  described  minutely 
the  hat  that  he  had  bought ; and  he  told  how,  to  carry  out 
the  little  despot  s orders — for  he  had  taken  all  her  commands 
literally— he  did  not  go  out  at  all,  and  said  that  he  was  ill 
as  an  excuse  for  refusing  invitations.  He  did  not  add  that  he 
was  even  on  bad  terms  with  the  Grand  Duke,  because,  in  excess 
of  zeal,  he  had  refused  to  go  to  a party  at  the  Palace  to  which 
he  had  been  invited.  The  whole  letter  was  full  of  a careless 
joy,  and  conveyed  those  little  secrets  so  dear  to  lovers.  He 
imagined  that  Minna  alone  had  the  key  to  them,  and  thought 
himself  very  clever,  because  he  had  carefully  replaced  every 
word  of  love  with  words  of  friendship. 

After  he  had  written  he  felt  comforted  for  a moment;  first, 
because  the  letter  had  given  him  the  illusion  of  conversation 
with  his  absent  fair,  but  chiefiy  because  he  had  no  doubt  but 
lhat  Minna  would  reply  to  it  at  once.  He  was  very  patient 
for  the  three  days  which  he  had  allowed  for  the  post  to  take 
his  letter  to  Minna  and  bring  back  her  answer;  but  when  the 
fourth  day  had  passed  he  began  once  more  to  find  life  difficult. 
He  had  no  energy  or  interest  in  things,  except  during  the  hour 
before  the  post’s  arrival.  Then  he  was  trembling  with  im- 
patience. He  became  superstitious,  and  looked  for  the  smallest 
sign  the  crackling  of  the  fire,  a chance  word — to  give  him  an 
assurance  that  the  letter  would  come.  Once  that  hour  was 
passed  he  would  collapse  again.  Ho  more  work,  no  more  walks; 


MOENMG  201 

the  only  object  of  bis  existence  was  to  wait  for  the  next  post, 
and  all  his  energy  was  expended  in  finding  strength  to  wait 
for  so  long.  But  when  evening  came,  and  all  hope  was  gone 
for  the  day,  then  he  was  crushed;  it  seemed  to  him  that  he 
could  never  live  until  the  morrow,  and  he  wouW  stay  for  hours, 
sitting  at  his  table,  without  speaking  or  thinking,  without  even 
the  power  to  go  to  bed,  until  some  remnant  of  his  will  would 
take  him  off  to  it;  and  he  would  sleep  heavily,  haunted  by 
stupid  dreams,  which  made  him  think  that  the  night  would 

never  end.  -u  • i 

This  continual  expectation  became  at  length  a physical  tor- 
ture, an  actual  illness.  Jean-Christophe  went  so  far  as  to 
suspect  his  father,  his  brother,  even  the  postman,  of  having 
taken  the  letter  and  hidden  it  from  him.  He  was  racked  with 
uneasiness.  He  never  doubted  Minna’s  fidelity  for  an  instant. 
If  she  did  not  write,  it  must  be  because  she  was  ill,  dying, 
perhaps  dead.  Then  he  rushed  to  his  pen  and  wrote  a third 
letter,  a few  heartrending  lines,  in  which  he  had  no  mme 
thought  of  guarding  his  feelings  than  of  taking  care  with  his 
spelling.  The  time  for  the  post  to  go  was  drawing  near;  he 
had  crossed  out  and  smudged  the  sheet  as  he  turned  it  over, 
dirtied  the  envelope  as  he  closed  it.  No  matter!  He  could 
not  wait  until  the  next  post.  He  ran  and  hurled  his  letter 
into  the  box  and  waited  in  mortal  agony.  On  the  next  night 
but  one  he  had  a clear  vision  of  Minna,  ill,  calling  to  him; 
he  got  up,  and  was  on  the  point  of  setting  out  on  foot  to  go 
to  her.  But  where?  Where  should  he  find  her? 

On  the  fourth  morning  Minna’s  letter  came  at  last— hardly 
a half-sheet — cold  and  stiff.  Minna  said  that  she  did  not 
understand  what  could  have  filled  him  with  such  stupid  fears, 
that  she  was  quite  well,  that  she  had  no  time  to  write,  and 
begged  him  not  to  get  so  excited  in  future,  and  not  to  write 

Jean-Christophe  was  stunned.  He  never  doubted  Minna  s 
sincerity.  He  blamed  himself ; he  thought  that  Minna  was 
justly  annoyed  by  the  impudent  and  absurd  letters  that  he  had 
written.  He  thought  himself  an  idiot,  and  beat  at  his  head 
with  his  fist.  But  it  was  all  in  vain;  he  was  forced  to  feel 
that  Minna  did  not  love  him  as  much  as  he  loved  her. 


202  JEAN-CHEISTOPHE  ‘ 


The  days  that  followed  ware  so  mournful  that  it  is  impossible 
to  describe  them.  Nothingness  cannot  be  described.  Deprived 

of  the  only  boon  that  made  living  worth  while  for  him his 

letters  to  Minna — Jean-Christophe  now  only  lived  mechanically, 
and  the  only  thing  which  interested  him  at  all  was  when  in 
the  evening,  as  he  was  going  to  bed,  he  ticked  off  on  the  calendar, 
like  a schoolboy,  one  of  the  interminable  days  which  lay  between 
himself  and  Minna’s  return.  The  day  of  the  return  was  past. 
They  ought  to  have  been  at  home  a week.  Feverish  excitement 
had  succeeded  Jean-Christophe’s  prostration.  Minna  had  prom- 
ised when  she  left  to  advise  him  of  the  day  and  hour  of  their 
arrival.  He  waited  from  moment  to  moment  to  go  and  meet 
them;  and  he  tied  himself  up  in  a web  of  guesses  as  to  the 
reasons  for  their  delay. 

One  evening  one  of  their  neighbors,  a friend  of  his  grand- 
father, Fischer,  the  furniture  dealer,  came  in  to  smoke  and 
chat  with  Melchior  after  dinner  as  he  often  did.  Jean-Chris- 
tophe, in  torment,  was  going  up  to  his  room  after  waiting  for  ■ 

the  postman  to  pass  when  a word  made  him  tremble.  Fischer  ! 

said  that  next  day  he  had  to  go  early  in  the  morning  to  the 
Kerichs’  to  hang  up  the  curtains.  Jean-Christophe  stopped  ' 
dead,  and  asked:  ' 

“ Have  they  returned  ? ” 

“ You  wag ! You  know  that  as  well  as  I do,”  said  old  Fischer 
roguishly.  “Fine  weather!  They  came  back  the  day  before  i 

yesterday.”  ! 

Jean-Christophe  heard  no  more;  he  left  the  room,  and  | 

got  ready  to  go  out.  His  mother,  who  for  some  time  1 

had  secretly  been  watching  him  without  his  knowing  it,  fol-  « 

lowed  him  into  the  lobby,  and  asked  him  timidly  where  he  \ 

was  going.  He  made  no  answer,  and  went  out.  He  was 
hurt. 

He  ran  to  the  Kerichs’  house.  It  was  nine  o’clock  in  the 
evening.  They  were  both  in  the  drawing-room  and  did  not 
appear  to  be  surprised  to  see  him.  They  said  “ Good-evening  ” 
quietly.  Minna  was  busy  writing,  and  held  out  her  hand  over 
the  table  and  went  on  with  her  letter,  vaguely  asking  him  for 
his  news.  She  asked  him  to  forgive  her  discourtesy,  and  pre- 
tended to  be  listening  to  what  he  said,  but  she  interrupted  him 


MOENING 


203 


to  ask  something  of  her  mother.  He  had  prepared  touehing 
words  concerning  all  that  he  had  suffered  during  her  absence ; 
he  could  hardly  summon  a few  words;  no  one  was  interested 
in  them,  and  he  had  not  the  heart  to  go  on— it  all  rang  so 
f 3/lSG 

When  Minna  had  finished  her  letter  she  took  up  some  work, 
and,  sitting  a little  away  from  him,  began  to  tell  him  about 
her  travels.  She  talked  about  the  pleasant  weeks  she  had  spent 
— riding  on  horseback,  country-house  life,  interesting  society; 
she  got  excited  gradually,  and  made  allusions  to  events  and 
people  whom  Jean-Christophe  did  not  know,  and  the  memory 
of  them  made  her  mother  and  herself  laugh.  ^ Jean-Christophe 
felt  that  he  was  a stranger  during  the  story; 'he  did  not  know 
how  to  take  it,  and  laughed  awkwardly.  He  never  took  his 
eyes  from  Minna’s  face,  beseeching  her  to  look  at  him,  implor- 
ing her  to  throw  him  a glance  for  alms.  But  when  she  did 
look  at  him — which  was  not  often,  for  she  addressed  herself 
more  to  her  mother  than  to  him — her  eyes,  like  her  voiee,  were 
cold  and  indifferent.  Was  she  so  constrained  because  of  her 
mother,  or  was  it  that  he  did  not  understand?  He  wished 
to  speak  to  her  alone,  but  Frau  von  Kerich  never  left  them 
for  a moment.  He  tried  to  bring  the  conversation  round  to 
some  subject  interesting  to  himself;  he  spoke  of  his  work  and 
his  plans ; he  was  dimly  conscious  that  Minna  was  evading  him, 
and  instinctively  he  tried  to  interest  her  in  himself.  Indeed, 
she  seemed  to  listen  attentively  enough;  she  broke  in  upon  his 
narrative  with  various  interjeetions,  which  were  never  very  apt, 
but  always  seemed  to  be  full  of  interest.  But  just  as  he  was 
beginning  to  hope  once  more,  carried  off  his  feet  by  one  of 
her  charming  smiles,  he  saw  Minna  put  her  little  hand  to  her 
lips  and  yawn.  He  broke  off  short.  She  sa,w  that,  and  asked 
his  pardon  amiably,  saying  that  she  was  tired.  He  got  up, 
thinking  that  they  would  persuade  him  to  stay,  but  they  said 
nothing.  He  spun  out  his  “ Good-bye,”  and  waited  for  a word 
to  ask  him  to  come  again  next  day;  there  was  no  suggestion 
of  it.  He  had  to  go.  Minna  did  not  take -him  to  the  door. 
She  held  out  her  hand  to  him— an  indifferent  hand  that  drooped 
limply  in  his — and  he  took  his  leave  of  them  in  the  middle 
of  the  room. 


204 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


He  went  home  with  terror  in  his  heart.  Of  the  Minna  of  two 
months  before,  of  his  beloved  Minna,  nothing  was  left.  What 
had  happened?  , What  had  become  of  her?  For  a poor  boy 
who  has  never  yet  experienced  the  continual  change,  the  com- 
plete disappearance,  and  the  absolute  renovation  of  living  souls, 
of  which  the  majority  are  not  so  much  souls  as  collections  of 
souls  in  succession  changing  and  dying  away  continually,  the 
simple  truth  was  too  cruel  for  him  to  be  able  to  believe  it. 

He  rejected  the  idea  of  it  in  terror,  and  tried  to  persuade  him- 
self that  he  had  not  been  able  to  see  properly,  and  that  Minna 
was  just  the  same.  He  decided  to  go  again  to  the  house  next 
morning,  and  to  talk  to  her  at  all  costs. 

He  did  not  sleep.  Through  the  night  he  counted  one  after 
another  the  chimes  of  the  clock.  From  one  o’clock  on  he  was 
rambling  round  the  Kerichs’  house;  he  entered  it  as  soon  as 
he  could.  He  did  not  see  Minna,  but  Frau  von  Kerich.  Always  ; 

busy  and  an  early  riser,  she  was  watering  the  pots  of  flowers  | 

on  the  veranda.  She  gave  a mocking  cry  when  she  saw  Jean- 
Christophe.  t 

Ah ! ” she  said.  It  is  you ! ...  I am  glad  you  have  * 
come.  I have  something  to  talk  to  you  about.  Wait  a mo-  ; 
ment.  . . i 

She  went  in  for  a moment  to  put  down  her  watering  can  ^ 

and  to  dry  her  hands,  and  came  back  with  a little  smile  as  she  1 

saw  Jean-Christophe’s  discomfiture;  he  was  conscious  of  the  f 

approach  of  disaster.  ' i 

''  Come  into  the  garden,”  she  said ; we  shall  be  quieter.”  ^ 

In  the  garden  that  was  full  still  of  his  love  he  followed  Frau  j 

von  Kerich.  She  did  not  hasten  to  speak,  and  enjoyed  the  ' 
boy’s  uneasiness. 

''  Let  us  sit  here,”  she  said  at  last.  They  were  sitting  on 
the  seat  in  the  place  where  Minna  had  held  up  her  lips  to  him 
on  the  eve  of  her  departure. 

I think  you  know  what  is  the  matter,”  said  Frau  von 
Kerich,  looking  serious  so  as  to  complete  his  confusion.  I 
should  never  have  thought  it  of  you,  Jean-Christopfie.  I thought 
you  a serious  boy.  I had  every  confidence  in  you.  I should 
never  have  thought  that  you  would  abuse  it  to  try  and  turn 
my  daughter’s  head.  She  was  in  your  keeping.  You  ought 


MOENING  205 

to  have  shown  respect  for  her,  respect  for  me,  respect  for  your- 
self/^ 

There  was  a light  irony  in  her  accents.  Fran  von  Kerich 
attached  not  the  least  importance  to  this  childish  love  affair; 
but  Jean-Christophe  was  not  conscious  of  it,  and  her  reproaches, 
which  he  took,  as  he  took  everything,  tragically,  went  to  his 
heart. 

"‘'But,  Madam  . . . but.  Madam  . . he  stammered,  with 
tears  in  his  eyes,  I have  never  abused  your  confidence.  . . . 
Please  do  not  think  that.  ...  I am  not  a bad  man,  that  I 
swear!  ...  I love  Fraulein  Minna.  I love  her  with  all  my 
soul,  and  I wish  to  marry  her.^’ 

Frau  von  Kerich  smiled. 

""  No,  my  poor  boy,'''  she  said,  with  that  kindly  smile  in  which 
was  so  much  disdain,  as  at  last  he  was  to  understand,  ""no, 
it  is  impossible,;  it  is  just  a childish  folly." 

""my?  Why?"  he  asked. 

He  took  her  hands,  not  believing  that  she  could  be  speaking 
seriously,  and  almost  reassured  by  the  new  softness  in  her  voice. 
She  smiled  still,  and  said: 

""  Because  . . ." 

He  insisted.  With  ironical  deliberation — she  did  not  take 
him  altogether  seriously — she  told  him  that  he  had  no  fortune, 
that  Minna  had  different  tastes.  He  protested  that  that  made 
no  difference;  that  he  would  be  rich,  famous;  that  he  would 
win  honors,  money,  all  that  Minna  could  desire.  Frau  von 
Kerich  looked  skeptical;  she  was  amused  by  his  self-confidence, 
and  only  shook  her  head  by  way  of  saying  no.  But  he  stuck 
to  it. 

""Ko,  Jean-Christophe,"  she  said  firmly,  ^^no.  It  is  not 
worth  arguing.  It  is  impossible.  It  is  hot  only  a question  of 
money.  So  many  things  1 The  position  . . ." 

She  had  no  need  to  finish.  That  was  a needle  that  pierced 
to  his  very  marrow.  His  eyes  were  opened.  He  saw  the  irony 
of  the  friendly  smile,  he  saw  the  coldness  of  the  kindly  look, 
he  understood  suddenly  what  it  was  that  separated  him  from 
this  woman  whom  he  loved  as  a son,  this  woman  who  seemed 
to  treat  him  like  a mother;  he  was  conscious  of  all  that  was 
patronizing  and  disdainful  in  her  affection.  He  got  up.  He 


206 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


was  pale.  Frau  von  Kerich  went  on  talking  to  him  in 
her  caressing  voice,  but  it  was  the  end;  he  heard  no  more 
the  music  of  the  words;  he  perceived  under  every  word  the 
falseness  of  that  elegant  soul.  He  could  not  answer  a 
word.  He  went.  Everything  about  him  was  going  round  and 
round. 

When  he  regained  his  room  he  flung  himself  on  his  bed, 
and  gave  way  to  a fit  of  anger  and  injured  pride,  just  as  he 
used  to  do  when  he  was  a little  boy.  He  bit  his  pillow;  he 
crammed  his  handkerchief  into  his  mouth,  so  that  no  one  should 
hear  him  crying.  He  hated  Frau  von  Kerich.  He  hated  Minna. 

He  despised  them  mightily.  It  seemed  to  him  that  he  had 
been  insulted,  and  he  trembled  with  shame  and  rage.  He  had 
to  reply,  to  take  immediate  action.  If  he  could  not  avenge  j 
himself  he  would  die.  1 

He  got  up,  and  wrote  an  idiotically  violent  letter:  || 

Madam, — ‘ 

I do  not  know  if,  as  you  say,  you  have  been  deceived  in  me.  ^ 

But  I do  know  that  I have  been  cruelly  deceived  in  you.  I * 

thought  that  you  were  my  friends.  You  said  so.  You  pre-  ■ 

tended  to  be  so,  and  I loved  you  more  than  my  life.  I see  now  ; 

that  it  was  all  a lie,  that  your  affection  for  me  was  only  a , 
sham;  you  made  use  of  me.  I amused  you,  provided  you  with  I 
entertainment,  made  music  for  you.  I was  your  servant.  Your  ( 
servant:  that  I am  not!  I am  no  man^s  servant!  | 

You  have  made  me  feel  cruelly  that  I had  no  right  to  love  ) 

your  daughter.  Nothing  in  the  world  can  prevent  my  heart  i 
from  loving  where  it  loves,  and  if  I am  not  your  equal  in  rank,  « 
I am  as  noble  as  you.  It  is  the  heart  that  ennobles  a man. 

If  I am  not  a Count,  I have  perhaps  more  honor  than  many 
Counts.  Lackey  or  Count,  when  a man  insults  me,  I despise 
him.  I despise  as  much  any  one  who  pretends  to  be  noble,  and 
is  not  noble  of  soul. 

Farewell ! You  have  mistaken  me.  You  have  deceived  me. 

I detest  you ! 

He  who,  in  spite  of  you,  loves,  and  will  love  till  death, 
Fraulein  Minna,  because  she  is  his,  and  nothing  can  take  her 
from  him.^^ 


MOENING 


207 


Hardly  had  he  thrown  his  letter  into  the  box  than  he  was 
filled  with  terror  at  what  he  had  done.  He  tried  not  to  think 
of  it,  but  certain  phrases  cropped  up  in  his  memory;  he  was 
in  a cold  sweat  as  he  thought  of  Frau  von  Kerich  reading  those 
enormities.  At  first  he  was  upheld  by  his  very  despair,  hut 
next  day  he  saw  that  his  letter  could  only  bring  about  a final 
separation  from  Minna,  and  that  seemed  to  him  the  Jrest  of 
misfortunes.  He  still  hoped  that  Frau  von  Kerich,  who  knew 
his  violent  fits,  would  not  take  it  seriously,  that  she  would  only 
reprimand  him  severely,  and— who  knows?— that  she  would 
be  touched  perhaps  by  the  sincerity  of  his  passiom  One  word 
and  he  would  have  thrown  himself  at  her  feet.  He  waited  for 
five  days.  Then  came  a letter.  She  said: 


“ Since,  as  you  say,  there  has  been  a misunderstanding  be- 
tween us,  it  would  be  wise  not  any  further  to  polong  it  1 
should  be  very  sorry  to  force  upon  you  a relationship  which 
has  become  painful  to  you.  You  will  think  it  natural,  there- 
fore, that  we  should  break  it  off.  I hope  that  you  will  m time 
to  come  have  no  lack  of  other  friends  who  will  be  able  to 
appreciate  you  as  you  wish  to  be  appreciated  I have  no  doubt 
as  to  your  future,  and  from  a distance  shall,  with  sympathy, 
follow  your  progress  in  your  musical  career.  Kind  regards. 

^ ^ ^jnciTi^PTTA  VON  Kerich. 


The  most  bitter  reproaches  would  have  been  less  cruel.  Jean- 
Christophe  saw  that  he  was  lost.  It  is  possible  to  reply  to  an 
uniust  accusation.  But  what  is  to  be  done  against  the  negati^- 
ness  of  such  polite  indifference?  He  raged  against  it.  He 
thouo-ht  that  he  would  never  see  Minna  again,  and  he  could 
not  bear  it.  He  felt  how  little  all  the  pride  in  the  world  weighs 
against  a little  love.  He  forgot  his  dignity;  he  became  cow- 
ardly; he  wrote  more  letters,  in  which  he  implored  forgiveness. 
They  were  no  less  stupid  than  the  letter  in  which  he  had  rai  e 
against  her.  They  evoked  no  response.  And  everything  was  said. 

He  nearly  died  of  it.  He  thought  of  killing  himself.  He 
thought  of  murder.  At  least,  he  imagined  that  he  thought  ot 


208 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


it.  He  was  possessed  by  incendiary  and  murderous  desires. 
People  have  little  idea  of  the  paroxysm  of  love  or  hate  which 
sometimes  devours  the  hearts  of  children.  It  was  the  most 
terrible  crisis  of  his  childhood.  It  ended  his  childhood.  It 
stiffened  his  will.  But  it  came  near  to  breaking  it  forever. 

He  found  life  impossible.  He  would  sit  for  hours  with  his 
elbows  on  the  window-sill  looking  down  into  the  courtyard, 
and  dreaming,  as  he  used  to  when  he  was  a little  boy,  of  some 
means  of  escaping  from  the  torture  of  life  when  it  became  too 
great.  The  remedy  was  there,  under  his  eyes.  Immediate  . . . 
immediate?  How  could  one  know?  . . . Perhaps  after  hours 
— centuries — ^horrible  sufferings!  . . . But  so  utter  was  his 
childish  despair  that  he  let  himself  be  carried  away  by  the 
giddy  round  of  such  thoughts. 

Louisa  saw  that  he  was  suffering.  She  could  not  gauge 
exactly  what  was  happening  to  him,  but  her  instinct  gave  her 
a dim  warning  of  danger.  She  tried  to  approach  her  son,  to 
discover  his  sorrow,  so  as  to  console  him.  But  the  poor  woman 
had  lost  the  habit  of  talking  intimately  to  Jean-Christophe.  For 
many  years  he  had  kept  his  thoughts  to  himself,  and  she  had 
been  too  much  taken  up  by  the  material  cares  of  life  to  find  time 
to  discover  them  or  divine  them.  Now  that  she  would  so  gladly 
have  come  to  his  aid  she  knew  not  what  to  do.  She  hovered 
about  him  like  a soul  in  torment;  she  would  gladly  have  found 
words  to  bring  him  comfort,  and  she  dared  not  speak  for  fear 
of  irritating  him.  And  in  spite  of  all  her  care  she  did  irritate 
him  by  her  every  gesture  and  by  her  very  presence,  »for  she 
was  not  very  adroit,  and  he  was  not  very  indulgent.  And  yet 
he  loved  her;  they  loved  each  other.  But  so  little  is  needed 
to  part  two  creatures  who  are  dear  to  each  other,  and  love  each 
other  with  all  their  hearts!  A too  violent  expression,  an  awk- 
ward gesture,  a harmless  twitching  of  an  eye  or  a nose,  a 

trick  of  eating,  walking,  or  laughing,  a physical  constraint 

which  is  beyond  analysis.  . . . You  say  that  these  things  are 

nothing,  and  yet  they  are  all  the  world.  Often  they  are  enough 

to  keep  a mother  and  a son,  a brother  and  a brother,  a friend 
and  a friend,  who  live  in  proximity  to  each  other,  forever 
strangers  to  each  other. 

Jean-Christophe  did  not  find  in  his  mother’s  grief  a sufficient 


MOENING 


209 


prop  in  the  crisis  through  which  he  was  passing.  Besides, 
what  is  the  affection  of  others  to  the  egoism  of  passion  pre- 
occupied with  itself? 

One  night  when  his  family  were  sleeping,  and  he  was  sitting 
by  his  desk,  not  thinking  or  moving,  he  was  engulfed  in  his 
perilous  ideas,  when  a sound  of  footsteps  resounded  down  the 
little  silent  street,  and  a knock  on  the  door  brought  him  from 
his  stupor.  There  was  a murmuring  of  thick  voices.  He 
remembered  that  his  father  had  not  come  in,  and  he  thought 
angrily  that  they  were  bringing  him  back  drunk,  as  they  had 
done  a week  or  two  before,  when  they  had  found  him  lying  in 
the  street.  For  Melchior  had  abandoned  all  restraint,  and  was 
more  and  more  the  victim  of  his  vice,  though  his  athletic  health 
seemed  not  in  the  least  to  suffer  from  an  excess  and  a reckless- 
ness which  would  have  killed  any  other  man.  He  ate  enough 
for  four,  drank  until  he  dropped,  passed  whole  nights  out  of 
doors  in  icy  rain,  was  knocked  down  and  stunned  in  brawls, 
and  would  get  up  again  next  day,  with  his  rowdy  gaiety,  wanting 
everybody  about  him  to  be  gay  too. 

Louisa,  hurrying  up,  rushed  to  open  the  door.  Jean-Chris- 
tophe,  who  had  not  budged,  stopped  his  ears  so  as  not  to  hear 
Melchior’s  vicious  voice  and  the  tittering  comments  of  the 
neighbors.  ... 

. Suddenly  a strange  terror  seized  him;  for  no  reason 
he  began  to  tremble,  with  his  face  hidden  in  his  hands.  And 
on  the  instant  a piercing  cry  made  him  raise  his  head.  He 
rushed  to  the  door.  ... 

In  the  midst  of  a group  of  men  talking  in  low  voices,  in 
the  dark  passage,  lit  only  by  the  flickering  light  of  a lantern, 
lying,  just  as  his  grandfather  had  done,  on  a stretcher,  was 
a body  dripping  with  water,  motionless.  Louisa  was  clinging 
to  it  and  sobbing.  They  had  just  found  Melchior  drowned  in 
the  mill-race. 

Jean-Christophe  gave  a cry.  Everything  else  vanished;  aU 
his  other  sorrows  were  swept  aside.  He  threw  himself  on  his 
father’s  body  by  Louisa’s  side,  and  they  wept  together. 

Seated  by  the  bedside,  watching  Melchior’s  last  sleep,  on 
whose  face  was  now  a severe  and  solemn  expression,  he  felt 
the  dark  peace  of  death  enter  into  his  soul.  His  childish  passion 


210 


JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 


was  gone  from  him  like  a fit  of  fever ; the  icy:  breath  of  the 
grave  had  taken  it  all  away.  Minna,  his  pride,  his  love,  and 
himself.  . . . Alas ! What  misery ! How  small  everything 
showed  by  the  side  of  this  reality,  the  only  reality — death! 
Was  it  worth  while  to  suffer  so  much,  to  desire  so  much,  to 
be  so  much  put  about  to  come  in  the  end  to  that  I . . . 

He  watched  his  father’s  sleep,  and  he  was  filled  with  an 
infinite  pity.  He  remembered  the  smallest  of  his  acts  of  kind- 
ness and  tenderness.  For  with  all  his  faults  Melchior  was  not 
bad;  there  was  much  good  in  him.  He  loved  his  family.  He 
was  honest.  He  had  a little  of  the  uncompromising  probity  of 
the  Kraffts,  which,  in  all  questions  of  morality  and  honor, 
suffered  no  discussion,  and  never  would  admit  the  least  of  those 
small  moral  impurities  which  so  many  people  in  society  regard 
not  altogether  as  faults.  He  was  brave,  and  whenever  there 
was  any  danger  faced  it  with  a sort  of  enjoyment.  If  he  was 
extravagant  himself,  he  was  so  for  others  too ; he  could  not  bear 
anybody  to  be  sad,  and  very  gladly  gave  away  all  that  belonged 
to  him — and  did  not  belong  to  him — to  the  poor  devils  he  met 
by  the  wayside.  All  his  qualities  appeared  to  Jean-Christophe 
now,  and  he  invented  some  of  them,  or  exaggerated  them.  It 
seemed  to  him  that  he  had  misunderstood  his  father.  He  re- 
proached himself  with  not  having  loved  him  enough.  He  saw 
him  as  broken  by  Life ; he  thought  he  heard  that  unhappy  soul, 
drifting,  too  weak  to  struggle,  crying  out  for  the  life  so  use- 
lessly lost.  He  heard  that  lamentable  entreaty  that  had  so  cut 
him  to  the  heart  one  day: 

^^Jean-Christophe!  Do  not  despise  me!” 

And  he  was  overwhelmed  by  remorse.  He  threw  himself  on 
the  bed,  and  kissed  the  dead  face  and  wept.  And  as  he  had 
done  that  day,  he  said  again: 

Dear  father,  I do  not  despise  you.  I love  you.  Forgive 
me!” 

But  that  piteous  entreaty  was  not  appeased,  and  went  on: 

Do  not  despise  me ! Do  not  despise  me ! ” And  suddenly 
Jean-Christophe  saw  himself  lying  in  the  place  of  the  dead 
man;  he  heard  the  terrible  words  coming  from  his  own  lips; 
he  felt  weighing  on  his  heart  the  despair  of  a useless  life, 
irreparably  lost.  And  he  thought  in  terror : Ah ! everything, 


MOENING 


211 


all  the  suffering,  all  the  misery  in  the  world,  rather  than  come 
to  that!  . . r How  near  he  had  been  to  it!  Had  he  not  all 
but  yielded  to  the  temptation  to  snap  off  his  life  himself, 
cowardly  to  escape  his  sorrow?  As  if  all  the  sorrows,  all 
betrayals,  were  not  childish  griefs  beside  the  torture  and  the 
crime  of  self-betrayal,  denial  of  faith,  of  self-contempt  in  death ! 

He  saw  that  life  was  a battle  without  armistice,  without 
mercy,  in  which  he  who  wishes  to  be  a man  worthy  of  the  name 
of  a man  must  forever  fight  against  whole  armies  of  invisible 
enemies;  against  the  murderous  forces  of  Nature,  uneasy  desires, 
dark  thoughts,  treacherously  leading  him  to  degradation  and 
destruction.  He  saw  that  he  had  been  on  the  point  of  falling 
into  the  trap.  He  saw  that  happiness  and  love  were  only  the 
friends  of  a moment  to  lead  the  heart  to  disarm  and  abdicate. 
And  the  little  puritan  of  fifteen  heard  the  voice  of  his  God: 

Go,  go,  and  never  rest.’^ 

But  whither.  Lord,  shall  I go  ? Whatsoever  I do,  whither- 
soever I go,  is  not  the  end  always  the  same?  Is  not  the  end 
of  all  things  in  that  ? 

Go  on  to  Death,  you  who  must  die ! Go  and  suffer,  you 
who  must  suffer!  You  do  not  live  to  be  happy.  You  live  to 
fulfil  my  Law.  Suffer ; die.  But  be  what  you  must  be — a Man.^^ 


YOUTH 


Christofori  faciem  die  quacunque  tueris^^ 
Ilia  nempe  die  non  morte  mala  morieris. 


I 


THE  HOUSE  OF  EULER 

The  house  was  plunged  in  silence.  Since  Melchior  s death 
everything  seemed  dead.  Now  that  his  loud  voice  was  stilled, 
from  morning  to  night  nothing  was  heard  but  the  wearisome 
murmuring  of  the  river. 

Christophe  hurled  himself  into  his  work.  He  took  a 
fiercely  angry  pleasure  in  self-castigation  for  having  wished  to 
be  happy.  To  expressions  of  sympathy  and  kind  words  he  made 
no  reply,  but  was  proud  and  stiff.  Without  a word  he  went  about 
his  daily  task,  and  gave  his  lessons  with  icy  politeness.  His 
pupils  who  knew  of  his  misfortune  were  shocked  by  his  in- 
sensibility. But  those  who  were  older  and  had  some  ex- 
perience of  sorrow  knew  that  this  apparent  coldness  might, 
in  a child,  be  used  only  to  conceal  suffering:  and  they  pitied 
him.  He  was  not  grateful  for  their  sympathy.  Even  music 
could  bring  him  no  comfort.  He  played  without  pleasure,  and 
as  a duty.  It  was  as  though  he  found  a cruel  joy  in  no  longer 
taking  pleasure  in  anything,  or  in  persuading  himseH  that  he 
did  not:  in  depriving  himself  of  every  reason  for  living,  and 
yet  going  on. 

His  two  brothers,  terrified  by  the  silence  of  the  house  of  death, 
ran  away  from  it  as  quickly  as  possible.  Kodolphe  went  into 
the  office  of  his  uncle  Theodore,  and  lived  with  him,  and  Ernest, 
after  trying  two  or  three  trades,  found  work  on  one  of  the 
Ehine  steamers  plying  between  Mainz  and  Cologne,  and  he 
used  to  come  back  only  when  he  wanted  money.  Chris- 
tophe was  left  alone  with  his  mother  in  the  house,  which  was 
too  large  for  them;  and  the  meagerness  of  their  resources, 
and  the  payment  of  certain  debts  which  had  been  discovered 
after  his  father’s  death,  forced  them,  whatever  pain  it  might 
cost,  to  seek  another  more  lowly  and  less  expensive  dwelling. 

They  found  a little  flat,— two  or  three  rooms  on  the  second 

216 


316 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


floor  of  a house  in  the  Market  Street.  It  was  a noisy  district 
in  the  middle  of  the  town^  far  from  the  river,  far  from  the  trees, 
far  from  the  country  and  all  the  familiar  places.  But  they 
had  to  consult  reason,  not  sentiment,  and  Christophe  found 
in  it  a fine  opportunity  for  gratifying  his  bitter  creed  of  self- 
mortification. Besides,  the  owner  of  the  house,  old  registrar 
Euler,  was  a friend  of  his  grandfather,  and  knew  the  family: 
that  was  enough  for  Louisa,  who  was  lost  in  her  empty  house, 
and  was  irresistibly  drawn  towards  those  who  had  known  the 
creatures  whom  she  had  loved. 

They  got  ready  to  leave.  They  took  long  draughts  of  the 
bitter  melancholy  of  the  last  days  passed  by  the  sad,  beloved 
fireside  that  was  to  be  left  forever.  They  dared  hardly  tell  their 
sorrow : they  were  ashamed  of  it,  or  afraid.  Each  thought  that 
they  ought  not  to  show  their  weakness  to  the  other.  At  .table, 
sitting  alone  in  a dark  room  with  half-closed  shutters,  they 
dared  not  raise  their  voices:  they  ate  hurriedly  and  did  not  look 
at  each  other  for  fear  of  not  being  able  to  conceal  their  trouble. 
They  parted  as  soon  as  they  had  finished.  Christophe  went 
back  to  his  work;  but  as  soon  as  he  was  free  for  a moment,  ! 
he  would  come  back,  go  stealthily  home,  and  creep  on  tiptoe  % 
to  his  room  or  to  the  attic.  Then  he  would  shut  the  door, 
sit  down  in  a corner  on  an  old  trunk  or  on  the  window-ledge,  ^ 
or  stay  there  without  thinking,  letting  the  indefinable  buzzing  ; 
and  humming  of  the  old  house,  which  trembled  with  the  lightest  j 
tread,  thrill  through  him.  His  heart  would  tremble  with  it.  | 
He  would  listen  anxiously  for  the  faintest  breath  in  or  out  of  i 
doors,  for  the  creaking  of  floors,  for  all  the  imperceptible  4 
familiar  noises:  he  knew  them  all.  He  would  lose  conscious-  .■ 
ness,  his  thoughts  would  be  filled  with  the  images  of  the  past, 
and  he  would  issue  from  his  stupor  only  at  the  sound  of  St. 
Martinis  clock,  reminding  him  that  it  was  time  to  go. 

In  the  room  below  him  he  could  hear  Louisa’s  footsteps  pass- 
ing softly  to  and  fro,  then  for  hours  she  could  not  be  heard; 
she  made  no  noise.  Christophe  would  listen  intently.  He  . 
would  go  down,  a little  uneasy,  as  one  is  for  a long  time  after 
a great  misfortune.  He  would  push  the  door  ajar;  Louisa  would 
turn  her  back  on  him;  she  would  be  sitting  in  front  of  a cup- 
board in  the  midst  of  a heap  of  things — ^rags,  old  belongings. 


YOUTH 


217 


odd  garments,  treasures,  which  she  had  brought  out  intendmg 
to  sort  them.  But  she  had  no  strength  for  it;  everything 
reminded  her  of  something;  she  would  turn  and  turn  it  in,  her 
hands  and  begin  to  dream;  it  would  drop  from  her  hands;  she 
would  stay  for  hours  together  with  her  arms  hanging  down, 
lying  back  exhausted  in  a chair,  given  up  to  a stupor  of  sorrow. 

Poor  Louisa  was  now  spending  most  of  her  life  in  the  past 
that  sad  past,  which  had  been  very  niggardly  of  joy  for  her  ; 
but  she  was  so  used  to  suffering  that  she  was  still  grateful 
for  the  least  tenderness  shown  to  her,  and  the  pale  lights  which 
had  shone  here  and  there  in  the  drab  days  of  her  life,  were 
still  enough  to  make  them  bright.  All  the  evil  that  Melchior 
had  done  her  was  forgotten;  she  remembered  only  the.  good. 
Her  marriage  had  been  the  great  romance  of  her  life.  If 
Melchior  had  been  drawn  into  it  by  a caprice,  of  which  he  had 
quickly  repented,  she  had  given  herself  with  her  whole  heart, 
she  thought  that  she  was  loved  as  much  as  she  had  loved;  and 
to  Melchior  she  was  ever  most  tenderly  grateful.  She  did  not 
try  to  understand  what  he  had  become  in  the  sequel.  Incapable 
of  seeing  reality  as  it  is,  she  only  knew  how  to  bear  it  as  it 
is,  humbly  and  honestly,  as  a woman  who  has  no  need  of  under- 
standing life  in  order  to  be  able  to  live.  What  she  could  not 
explain,  she  left  to  God  for  explanation.  In  her  sinplar  piety, 
she  put  upon  God  the  responsibility  for  all  the  injustice  that 
she  had  suffered  at  the  hands  of  Melchior  and  the  others,  and 
only  visited  them  with  the  good  that  they  had  given  her.  And  so 
her  life  of  misery  had  left  her  with  no  bitter  memory.  She 
only  felt  worn  out— weak  as  she  was— by  those  years  of  priva- 
tion and  fatigue.  And  now  that  Melchior  was  no  longer  there, 
now  that  two  of  her  sons  were  gone  from  their  home,  and  the 
third  seemed  to  be  able  to  do  without  her,  she  had  lost  all  heart 
for  action;  she  was  tired,  sleepy;  her  will  was  stupefied.  She 
was  going  through  one  of  those  crises  of  neurasthenia  whmh 
often  come  upon  active  and  industrious  people  in  the  decline 
of  life,  when  some  unforeseen  event  deprives  them  of  every 
reason  for  living.  She  had  not  the  heart  even  to  finish  the 
stocking  she  was  knitting,  to  tidy  the  drawer  in  which  she  was 
looking,  to  get  up  to  shut  the  window;  she  would  sit  there, 
without  a thought,  without  strength — save  for  recollection. 


^18 


JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 


.She  was  conscious  of  her  collapse,  and  was  ashamed  of  it  or 
blushed  for  it;  she  tried  to  hide  it  from  her  son;  and 
Christophe,  wrapped  up  in  the  egoism  of  his  own  grief,  never 
noticed  it.  No  doubt  he  was  often  secretly  impatient  with  his 
mother^s  slowness  in  speaking,  and  acting,  and  doing  the  small- 
est thing;  but  different  though  her  ways  were  from  her  usual^ 
activity,  he  never  gave  a thought  to  the  matter  until  then. 

Suddenly  on  that  day  it  came  home  to  him  for  the  first  time 
when  he  surprised  her  in  the  midst  of  her  rags,  turned  out 
on  the  floor,  heaped  up  at  her  feet,  in  her  arms,  and  in  her 
lap.  Her  neck  was  drawn  out,  her  head  was  bowed,  her  face 
was  stiff  and  rigid.  When  she  heard  him  come  in  she  started; 
her  white  cheeks  were  suffused  with  red;  with  an  instinctive 
movement  she  tried  to  hide  the  things  she  was  holding,  and 
muttered  with  an  awkward  smile: 

^^You  see,  I was  sorting  . . .’^ 

The  sight  of  the  poor  soul  stranded  among  the  relics  of  the 
past  cut  to  his  heart,  and  he  was  fllled  with  pity.  But  he  spoke 
with  a bitter  asperity  and  seemed  to  scold,  to  drag  her  from 
her  apathy: 

Come,  come,  mother ; you  must  not  stay  there,  in  the  middle 
of  all  that  dust,  with  the  room  all  shut  up!  It  is  not  good 
for  you.  You  must  pull  yourself  together,  and  have  done  with 
nil  this.^^ 

Yes,^^  said  she  meekly. 

She  tried  to  get  up  to  put  the  things  back  in  the  drawer. 
But  she  sat  down  again  at  once  and  listlessly  let  them  fall  from 
her  hands. 

Oh ! I can’t  ...  I can’t,”  she  moaned.  I shall  never 
finish!” 

He  was  frightened.  He  leaned  over  her.  He  caressed  her 
forehead  with  his  hands. 

Come,  mother,  what  is  it  ? ” he  said.  Shall  I help  you  ? 
Are  you  ill?” 

She  did  not  answer.  She  gave  a sort  of  stifled  sob.  He 
took  her  hands,  and  knelt  down  by  her  side,  the  better  to  see 
her  in  the  dusky  room. 

Mother ! ” he  said  anxiously. 

Louisa  laid  her  head  on  his  shoulder  and  burst  into  tears. 


YOUTH 


219^ 


boy,  my  boy/"  she  cried,  holding  close  to  him.  "'My 
boy!  ...  You  will  not  leave  me?  Promise  me  that  you  will 
not  leave  me?"" 

His  heart  was  torn  with  pity. 

"No,  mother,  no.  I will  not  leave  you.  What  made  you 
think  of  such  a thing  ? "" 

" I am  so  unhappy ! They  have  all  left  me,  all.  . . ."" 

She  pointed  to  the  things  all  about  her,  and  he  did  not  know 
whether  she  was  speaking  of  them  or  of  her  sons  and  the 
dead. 

"You  will  stay  with  me?  You  will  not  leave  me?  . . . 
What  should  I do,  if  you  went  too  ? "" 

" I will  not  go,  I tell  you ; we  will  stay  together.  Don"t  cry. 
I promise."" 

She  went  on  weeping.  She  could  not  stop  herself.  He  dried 
her  eyes  with  his  handkerchief. 

" \Wiat  is  it,  mother  dear  ? Are  you  in  pain  ? "" 

" 1 don"t  know ; I don"t  know  what  it  is.""  She  tried  to  calm 
herself  and  to  smile. 

" I do  try  to  be  sensible.  I do.  But  just  nothing  at  all 
makes  me  cry.  ...  You  see,  I"m  doing  it  again.  . . . Forgive 
me.  I am  so  stupid.  I am  old.  I have  no  strength  left.  I 
have  no  taste  for  anything  any  more.  I am  no  good  for  any- 
thing.  I wish  I were  buried  with  all  the  rest.  . . ."" 

He  held  her  to  him,  close,  like  a child. 

" Don"t  worry,  mother ; be  calm ; don"t  think  about  it.  . . ."" 

Gradually  she  grew  quiet. 

"Tt  is  foolish.  I am  ashamed.  . . . But  what  is  it?  What 
is  it  ? "" 

She  who  had  always  worked  so  hard  could  not  understand 
why  her  strength  had  suddenly  snapped,  and  she  was  humili- 
ated to  the  very  depths  of  her  being.  He  pretended  not  to  see  it. 

"A  little  weariness,  mother,""  he  said,  trying  to  speak  care- 
lessly. " It  is  nothing ; you  will  see ; it  is  nothing."" 

But  he  too  was  anxious.  From  his  childhood  he  had  been 
accustomed  to  see  her  brave,  resigned,  in  silence  withstanding 
every  test.  And  he  was  astonished  to  see  her  suddenly  broken : 
he  was  afraid. 

He  helped  her  to  sort  the  things  scattered  on  the  floor.  Every 


230  JEAK-CHEISTOPHE 

now  and  then  she  would  linger  over  something,  but  he  would 
gently  take  it  from  her  hands,  and  she  suffered  him. 

From  that  time  on  he  took  pains  to  be  more  with  her.  As 
soon  as  he  had  finished  his  work,  instead  of  shutting  himself 
up  in  his  room,  as  he  loved  to  do,  he  would  return  to  her.  He 
felt  her  loneliness  and  that  she  was  not  strong  enough  to  be 
left  alone:  there  was  danger  in  leaving  her  alone. 

He  would  sit  by  her  side  in  the  evening  near  the  open  window 
looking  on  to  the  road.  The  view  would  slowly  disappear. 
The  people  were  returning  home.  Little  lights  appeared  in 
the  houses  far  off.  They  had  seen  it  all  a thousand  times. 
But  soon  they  would  see  it  no  more.  They  would  talk  dis- 
jointedly.  They  would  point  out  to  each  other  the  smallest  of 
the  familiar  incidents  and  expectations  of  the  evening,  always 
with  fresh  interest.  They  would  have  long  intimate  silences,  . 
or  Louisa,  for  no  apparent  reason,  would  tell  some  remi-  ^ 
niscence,  some  disconnected  story  that  passed  through  her  • 
mind.  Her  tongue  was  loosed  a little  now  that  she  felt  . 
that  she  was  with  one  who  loved  her.  She  tried  hard  to 
talk.  It  was  difiScult  for  her,  for  she  had  grown  used  ; 
to  living  apart  from  her  family ; she  looked  upon  her  sons  and 
her  husband  as  too  clever  to  talk  to  her,  and  she  had  never 
dared  to  join  in  their  conversation.  Christophe’s  tender  j 
care  was  a new  thing  to  her  and  infinitely  sweet,  though  ; 
it  made  her  afraid.  She  deliberated  over  her  words;  she  found  ^ 
it  difficult  to  express  herself;  her  sentences  were  left  unfinishd  | 
and  obscure.  Sometimes  she  was  ashamed  of  what  she  was  ,• 
saying;  she  would  look  at  her  son,  and  stop  in  the  middle  of  > 
her  narrative.  But  he  would  press  her  hand,  and  she  would  ; 
be  reassured.  He  was  filled  with  love  and  pity  for  the  childish, 
motherly  creature,  to  whom  he  had  turned  when  he  was  a child, 
and  now  she  turned  to  him  for  support.  And  he  took  a melan- 
choly pleasure  in  her  prattle,  that  had  no  interest  for  anybody 
but  himself,  in  her  trivial  memories  of  a life  that  had  always 
been  joyless  and  mediocre,  though  it  seemed  to  Louisa  to  be  of 
infinite  worth.  Sometimes  he  would  try  to  interrupt  her;  he 
was  afraid  that  her  memories  would  make  her  sadder  than  ever, 
and  he  would  urge  her  to  sleep.  She  would  understand  what 
he  was  at,  and  would  say  with  gratitude  in  her  eyes . 


YOUTH 


221 


"No.  I assure  you,  it  does  one  good;  let  us  stay  a little 
longer.” 

They  would  stay  until  the  night  was  far  gone  and  the  neigh- 
bors were  abed.  Then  they  would  say  good-night,  she  a litde 
comforted  by  being  rid  of  some  of  her  trouble,  he  with  a heavy 
heart  under  this  new  burden  added  to  that  which  already  he 
had  to  bear. 

The  day  came  for  their  departure.  On  the  night  before 
they  stayed  longer  than  usual  in  the  unlighted  room.  They 
did  not  speak.  Every  now  and  then  Louisa  moaned:  “Fear 
God ! Fear  God ! ” Christophe  tried  to  keep  her  attention 
fixed  on  the  thousand  details  of  the  morrow’s  removal.  She 
would  not  go  to  bed  until  he  gently  compelled  her.  But  he 
went  up  to  his  room  and  did  not  go  to  bed  for  a long  time. 
When  leaning  out  of  the  window  he  tried  to  gaze  through  the 
darkness  to  see  for  the  last  time  the  moving  shadows  pf  the 
river  beneath  the  house.  He  heard  the  wind  in  the  tall  trees 
in  Minna’s  garden.  The  sky  was  black.  There  was  no  one 
in  the  street.  A cold  rain  was  just  falling.  The  weathercocks 
creaked.  In  a house  near  by  a child  was  crying.  The  night 
weighed  with  an  overwhelming  heaviness  upon  the  earth  and 
upon  his  soul.  The  didl  chiming  of  the  hours,  the  cracked  note 
of  the  halves  and  quarters,  dropped  one  after  another  into  the 
grim  silence,  broken  only  by  the  sound  of  the  rain  on  the 
roofs  and  the  cobbles. 

When  Christophe  at  last  made  up  his  mind  to  go  to  bed, 
chilled  in  body  and  soul,  he  heard  the  window  below  him 
shut.  And,  as  he  lay,  he  thought  sadly  that  it  is  cruel  for 
the  poor  to  dwell  on  the  past,  for  they  have  no  right  to  have 
a past,  like  the  rich:  they  have  no  home,  no  corner  of  the 
earth  wherein  to  house  their  memories:  their  joys,  their  sor- 
rows, all  their  days,  are  scattered  in  the  wind. 

Next  day  in  beating  rain  they  moved  their  scanty  furniture 
to  their  new  dwelling.  Fischer,  the  old  furniture  dealer,  lent 
them  a cart  and  a pony;  he  came  and  helped  them  himself. 
But  they  could  not  take  everything,  for  the  rooms  to  which 
they  were  going  were  much  smaller  than  the  old.  Chris- 
tophe had  to  make  his  mother  leave  the  oldest  and  most  useless 
of  their  belongings.  It  was  not  altogether  easy ; the  least  thing 


223 


JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 


had  its  worth  for  her : a shaky  table,  a broken  chair,  she  wished 
to  leave  nothing  behind.  Fischer,  fortified  by  the  authority  of 
hill  old  friendship  with  Jean  Michel,  had  to  join  Chris- 
toj)he  in  complaining,  and,  good-fellow  that  he  was  and 
understanding  her  grief,  had  even  to  promise  to  keep 
some  of  her  precious  rubbish  for  her  against  the  day  when 
she  should  want  it  again.  Then  she  agreed  to  tear  her- 
self away. 

The  two  brothers  had  been  told  of  the  removal,  but  Ernest 
ohme  on  the  night  before  to  say  that  he  could  not  be  there, 
4nd  Eodolphe  appeared  for  a moment  about  noon;  he  watched 
/ them  load  the  furniture,  gave  some  advice,  and  went  away 
again  looking  mightily  busy. 

The  procession  set  out  through  the  muddy  streets.  Chris- 
tophe  led  the  horse,  which  slipped  on  the  greasy  cobbles.  , 
Louisa  walked  by  her  son’s  side,  and  tried  to  shelter  him  from 
the  rain.  And  so  they  had  a melancholy  homecoming  in  the 
damp  rooms,  that  were  made  darker  than  ever  by  the  dull  light  , 
coming  from  the  lowering  sky.  They  could  not  have  fought 
against  the  depression  that  was  upon  them  had  it  not  been  j 
for  the  attentions  of  their  landlord  and  his  family.  But,  when  , 
the  cart  had  driven  away,  as  night  fell,  leaving  the  furniture  ■ 
heaped  up  in  the  room;  and  Christophe  and  Louisa  were 
sitting,  worn  out,  one  on  a box,  the  other  on  a sack ; they 
heard  a little  dry  cough  on  the  staircase;  there  was  a knock  ! 
at  the  door.  Old  Euler  came  in.  He  begged  pardon  elaborately  ] 
for  disturbing  his  guests,  and  said  that  by  way  of  celebrating  j 
their  first  evening  he  hoped  that  they  would  be  kind,  enough  , 
to  sup  with  himself  and  his  family.  Louisa,  stunned  by  her  ; 
sorrow,  wished  to  refuse.  Christophe  was  not  much  more 
tempted  than  she  by  this  friendly  gathering,  but  the  old  man 
insisted  and  Christophe,  thinking  that  it  would  be  better  for 
his  mother  not  to  spend  their  first  evening  in  their  new  home 
alone  with  her  thoughts,  made  her  accept. 

They  went  down  to  the  floor  below,  where  they  found  the 
whole  family  collected;  the  old  man,  his  daughter,  his  son-in- 
law,  Vogel,  and  his  grandchildren,  a boy  and  a girl,  both  a 
little  younger  than  Christophe.  They  clustered  around  their 
guests,  bade  them  welcome,  asked  if  they  were  tired,  if  they 

\ 


YOUTH 


223 


were  pleased  with  their  rooms,  if  they  needed  anything ; putting 
so  many  questions  that  Christophe  in  bewilderment  could  make 
nothing  of  them,  for  everybody  spoke  at  once.  The  soup  was 
placed  on  the  table;  they  sat  down.  But  the  noise  went  on. 
Amalia,  Euler’s  daughter,  had  set  herself  at  once  to  acquaint 
Louisa  with  local  details:  with  the  topography  of  the  district, 
the  habits  and  advantages  of  the  house,  the  time  when  the 
milkman  called,  the  time  when  she  got  up,  the  various  trades- 
people and  the  prices  that  she  paid.  She  did  not  stop  until 
she  had  explained  everything.  Louisa,  half-asleep,  tried  hard 
to  take  an  interest  in  the  information,  but  the  remarks  which 
she  ventured  showed  that  she  had  understood  not  a word,  and 
provoked  Amalia  to  indignant  exclamations  and  repetition  of 
every  detail.  Old  Euler,  a clerk,  tried  to  explain  to  Chris- 
tophe the  difficulties  of  a musical  career.  Christophe’s  other 
neighbor,  Eosa,  Amalia’s  daughter,  never  stopped  talking  from 
the  moment  when  they  sat  down, — so  volubly  that  she  had 
no  time  to  breathe;  she  lost  her  breath  in  the  middle  of  a 
sentence,  but  at  once  she  was  off  again.  Vogel  was  gloomy  and 
complained  of  the  food,  and  there  were  embittered  arguments 
on  the  subject.  Amalia,  Euler,  the  girl,  left  off  talking  to 
take  part  in  the  discussion;  and  there  were  endless  controversies 
as  to  whether  there  was  too  much  salt  in  the  stew  or  not  enough ; 
they  called  each  other  to  witness,  and,  naturally,  no  two  opinions 
were  the  same.  Each  despised  his  neighbor’s  taste,  and  thought 
only  his  own  healthy  and  reasonable.  They  might  have  gone 
on  arguing  until  the  Last  Judgment. 

But,  in  the  end,  they  all  joined  in  crying  out  upon  the  bad 
weather.  They  all  commiserated  Louisa  and  Christophe  upon 
their  troubles,  and  in  terms  which  moved  him  greatly  they 
praised  him  for  his  courageous  conduct.  They  took  great  pleas- 
ure in  recalling  not  only  the  misfortunes  of  their  guests,  but 
also  their  own,  and  those  of  their  friends  and  all  their  acquaint- 
ance, and  they  all  agreed  that  the  good  are  always  unhappy, 
and  that  there  is  joy  only  for  the  selfish  and  dishonest.  They 
decided  that  life  is  sad,  that  it  is  quite  useless,  and  that  they 
were  all  better  dead,  were  it  not  the  indubitable  will  of  God 
that  they  should  go  on  living  so  as  to  suffer.  As  these  ideas 
came  very  near  to  Christophe’s  actual  pessimism,  he  thought 

\ 


224  JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 

the  better  of  his  landlord,  and  closed  his  eyes  to  their  little 
oddities. 

When  he  went  upstairs  again  with  his  mother  to  the  dis- 
ordered rooms,  they  were  weary  and  sad,  but  they  felt  a little 
less  lonely;  and  while  Christophe  lay  awake  through  the  night, 
for  he  could  not  sleep  because  of  his  weariness  and  the  noise 
of  the  neighborhood,  and  listened  to  the  heavy  carts  shaking 
the  walls,  and  the  breathing  of  the  family  sleeping  below,  he 
tried  to  persuade  himself  that  he  would  be,  if  not  happy,  at 
least  less  unhappy  here,  with  these  good  people — a little  tire- 
some, if  the  truth  be  told — who  suffered  from  like  misfortunes,, 
who  seemed  to  understand  him,  and  whom,  he  thought,  he  under- 
stood. 

But  when  at  last  he  did  fall  asleep,  he  was  roused  unpleasantly 
at  dawn  by  the  voices  of  his  neighbors  arguing,  and  the  creak- 
ing of  a pump  worked  furiously  by  some  one  who  was  in  a 
hurry  to  swill  the  yard  and  the  stairs. 

• 

Justus  Euler  was  a little  bent  old  man,  with  uneasy,  gloomy 
eyes,  a red  face,  all  lines  and  pimples,  gap-toothed,  with 
an  unkempt  beard,  with  which  he  was  forever  fidgeting 
with  his  hands.  Very  honest,  quite  able,  profoundly  moral,, 
he  had  been  on  quite  good  terms  with  Christophers  grand- 
father. He  was  said  to  be  like  him.  And,  in  truth,  he 
was  of  the  same  generation  and  brought  up  with  the  same 
principles;  but  he  lacked  Jean  Michel’s  strong  physique, 
that  is,  while  he  was  of  the  same  opinion  on  many  points, 
fundamentally  he  was  hardly  at  all  like  him,  for  it  is 
I temperament  far  more  than  ideas  that  makes  a man,  and  what- 
" ever  the  divisions,  fictitious  or  real,  marked  between  men  by 
intellect,  the  great  divisions  between  men  and  men  are  into 
those  who  are  healthy  and  those  who  are  not.  Old  Euler 
was  not  a healthy  man.  He  talked  morality,  like  Jean  Michel, 
but  his  morals  were  not  the  same  as  Jean  Michel’s;  he  had 
not  his  sound  stomach,  his  lungs,  or  his  Jovial  strength.  Every- 
thing in  Euler  and  his  family  was  built  on  a more  parsimonious 
and  niggardly  plan.  He  had  been  an  official  for  forty  years, 
was  now  retired,  and  suffered  from  that  melancholy  that  comes; 
from  inactivity  and  weighs  so  heavily  upon  old  men,  who  have: 


YOUTH 


225 


not  made  provision  in  their  inner  life  for  their  last  years. 
All  his  habits,  natural  and  acquired,  all  the  habits  of  his  trade 
had  given  him  a meticulous  and  peevish  quality,  which  was 
reproduced  to  a certain  extent  in  each  of  his  children. 

His  son-in-law,  Vogel,  a clerk  at  the  Chancery  Court,  was 
fifty  years  old.  Tall,  strong,  almost  bald,  with  gold  spectacles, 
fairly  good-looking,  he  considered  himself  ill,  and  no  doubt 
was  so,  although  obviously  he  did  not  have  the  diseases  which 
he  thought  he  had,  but  only  a mind  soured  by  the  stupidity 
of  his  calling  and  a body  ruined  to  a certain  extent  by  his 
sedentary  life.  Very  industrious,  not  without  merit,  even  cul- 
tured up  to  a point,  he  was  a victim  of  our  ridiculous  modern, 
life,  or  like  so  many  clerks,  locked  up  in  their  offices,  he  had 
succumbed  to  the  demon  of  hypochondria.  One  of  those  un- 
fortunates whom  Goethe  called  ‘'‘’em  trauriger,  ungriechischer 
Hypochondrist  ” — “a  gloomy  and  un-Greek  hypochondriac,” — 
and  pitied,  though  he  took  good  care  to  avoid  them. 

Amalia  was  neither  the  one  nor  the  other.  Strong,  loud, 
and  active,  she  wasted  no  sympathy  on  her  husband’s  jeremiads ; 
she  used  to  shake  him  roughly.  But  no  human  strength  can 
bear  up  against  living  together,  and  when  in  a household  one 
or  other  .is  neurasthenic,  the  chances  are  that  in  time  they 
will  both  be  so.  In  vain  did  Amalia  cry  out  upon  Vogel, 
in  vain  did  she  go  on  protesting  either  from  habit  or  because 
it  was  necessary;  next  moment  she  herself  "^as  lamenting  her 
condition  more  loudly  even  than  he,  and,  passing  imperceptibly 
from  scolding  to  lamentation,  she  did  him  no  good;  she  in- 
creased his  ills  tenfold  by  loudly  singing  chorus  to  his  follies. 
In  the  end  not  only  did  she  crush  the  unhappy  Vogel,  terrified 
by  the  proportions  assumed  by  his  own  outcries  sent  sounding 
back  by  this  echo,  but  she  crushed  everybody,  even  herself.  In 
her  turn  she  caught  the  trick  of  unwarrantably  bemoaning  her 
health,  and  her  father’s,  and  her  daughter’s,  and  her  son’s. 
It  became  a mania;  by  constant  repetition  she  came  to  believe 
what  she  said.  She  took  the  least  chill  tragically ; she  was 
uneasy  and  worried  about  everybody.  More  than  that,  when 
they  were  well,  she  still  worried,  because  of  the  sickness  that 
was  bound  to  come.  So  life  was  passed  in  perpetual  fear. 
Outside  that  they  were  all  in  fairly  good  health,  and  it  seemed 


226 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


as  though  their  state  of  continual  moaning  and  groaning  did 
serve  to  keep  them  well.  They  all  ate  and  slept  and  worked 
as  usual,  and  the  life  of  this  household  was  not  relaxed  for  it 
all.  Amalia’s  activity  was  not  satisfied  with  working  from 
morning  to  night  up  and  down  the  house;  they  all  had  to  toil 
with  her,  and  there  was  forever  a moving  of  furniture,  a wash- 
ing of  floors,  a polishing  of  wood,  a sound  of  voices,  footsteps, 
quivering,  movement. 

The  two  children,  crushed  by  such  loud  authority,  leaving 
nobody  alone,  seemed  to  find  it  natural  enough  to  submit  to  it. 
The  boy,  Leonard,  was  good  looking,  though  insignificant  of 
feature,  and  stiff  in  manner.  The  girl,  Eosa,  fair-haired,  with 
pretty  blue  eyes,  gentle  and  affectionate,  would  have  been  pleas- 
ing especially  with  the  freshness  of  her  delicate  complexion, 
and  her  kind  manner,  had  her  nose  not  been  quite  so  large 
or  so  awkwardly  placed;  it  made  her  face  heavy  and  gave  her 
a foolish  expression.  She  was  like  a girl  of  Holbein,  in  the 
gallery  at  Basle — the  daughter  of  burgomaster  Meier — sitting, 
with  eyes  cast  down,  her  hands  on  her  knees,  her  fair  hair 
falling  down  to  her  shoulders,  looking  embarrassed  and  ashamed 
of  her  uncomely  nose.  But  so  far  Eosa  had  not  been  troubled 
by  it,  and  it  never  had  broken  in  upon  her  inexhaustible  chatter. 
Always  her  shrill  voice  was  heard  in  the  house  telling  stories, 
always  breathless,  as  though  she  had  no  time  to  say  everything, 
always  excited  and  animated,  in  spite  of  the  protests  which 
she  drew  from  her  mother,  her  father,  and  even  her  grand- 
father, exasperated,  not  so  much  because  she  was  forever  talking 
as  because  she  prevented  them  talking  themselves.  For  these 
good  people,  kind,  loyal,  devoted — the  very  cream  of  good 
people — had  almost  all  the  virtues,  but  they  lacked  one  virtue 
which  is  capital,  and  is  the  charm  of  life : the  virtue  of  silence. 

Christophe  was  in  tolerant  mood.  His  sorrow  had  soft- 
ened his  intolerant  and  emphatic  temper.  His  experience  of 
the  cruel  indifference  of  the  elegant  made  him  more  conscious 
of  the  worth  of  these  honest  folk,  graceless  and  devilish  tire- 
some, who  had  yet  an  austere  conception  of  life,  and  because 
they  lived  joylessly,  seemed  to  him  to  live  without  weakness. 
Having  decided  that  they  were  excellent,  and  that  he  ought  to 
like  them,  like  the  German  that  he  was,  he  tried  to  persuade 


YOUTH 


227 


himself  that  he  did  in  fact  like  them.  But  he  did  not  succeed;; 
he  lacked  that  easy  Germanic  idealism,  which  does  not  wish  to 
see,  and  does  not  see,  what  would  be  displeasing  to  its  sight,; 
for  fear  of  disturbing  the  very  proper  tranquillity  of  its  judg-: 
ment  and  the  pleasantness  of  its  existence.  On  the  contrary,' 
he  never  was  so  conscious  of  the  defects  of  these  people  as 
when  he  loved  them,  when  he  wanted  to  love  them  absolutely 
without  reservation;  it  was  a sort  of  unconscious  loyalty,  and 
an  inexorable  demand  for  truth,  which,  in  spite  of  himself, 
made  him  more  clear-sighted,  and  more  exacting,  with  what  was 
dearest  to  him.  And  it  was  not  long  before  he  began  to  be 
irritated  by  the  oddities  of  the  family.  They  made  no  attempt 
to  conceal  them.  Contrary  to  the  usual  habit  they  displayed 
every  intolerable  quality  they  possessed,  and  all  the  good  in 
them  was  hidden.  So  Christophe  told  himself,  for  he  judged 
himself  to  have  been  unjust,  and  tried  to  surmount  his  first 
impressions,  and  to  discover  in  them  the  excellent  qualities 
which  they  so  carefully  concealed. 

He  tried  to  converse  with  old  Justus  Euler,  who  asked  nothing 
better.  He  had  a secret  sympathy  with  him,  remembering  that 
his  grandfather  had  liked  to  praise  him.  But  good  old  Jean 
Michel  had  more  of  the  pleasant  faculty  of  deceiving  himself 
about  his  friends  than  Christophe,  and  Christophe  soon  saw 
that.  In  vain  did  he  try  to  accept  Euler’s  memories  of  his 
grandfather.  He  could  only  get  from  him  a discolored  cari- 
cature of  Jean  Michel,  and  scraps  of  talk  that  were  utterly 
uninteresting.  Euler’s  stories  used  invariably  to  begin  with: 

“As  I used  to  say  to  your  poor  grandfather  . . .” 
He  could  remember  nothing  else.  He  had  heard  only  what 
he  had  said  himself. 

Perhaps  Jean  Michel  used  only  to  listen  .in  the  same  way;.; 

I Most  friendships  are  little  more  than  arrangements  for  mutua|| 
S satisfaction,  so  that  each  party  may  talk  about  himself  to  th^l 
other.  But  at  least  Jean  Michel,  however  naively  he  used  tc|| 
give  himself  up  to  the  delight  of  talking,  had  sympathy  which; 
he  was  always  ready  to  lavish  on  all  sides.  He  was  interested 
in  everything ; he  always  regretted  that  he  was  no  longer  fifteen, 
so  as  to  be  able  to  see  the  marvelous  inventions  of  the  new 
generations,  and  to  share  their  thoughts.  He  had  the  quality. 


i perhaps  the  most  precious  in  life,  a curiosity  always  fresh, 

^ never  changing  with  the  years,  born  anew  every  morning.  He 
had  not  the  talent  to  turn  this  gift  to  account;  but  how  many___ 
men  of  talent  might  envy  him ! Most  men  die  at  twenty  or  | i 
thirty;  thereafter  they  are  only  reflections  of  themselves:  for  I 
the  rest  of  their  lives  they  are  aping  themselves,  repeating  from  j 
day  to  day  more  and  more  mechanically  and  affectedly  what  * 
they  said  and  did  and  thought  and  loved  when  they  were  alive. 
^/It  was  so  Tong  since  old  Euler  had  been  alive,  and  he  had 
.fji,  .V  been  such  a small  thing  then,  that  what  was  left  of  him  now 
,|||  was  very  jgoor  and_  ratherjidiculoua^  Outside  his  former  trade 

fil,  , a^dTiis  Ifamily  life  he  knew  nothing,  and  wished  to  know  noth- 
yi  ing.  On  every  subject  he  had  ideas  ready-made,  dating  from 

his  youth.  He  pretended  to  some  knowledge  of  the  arts,  but 
iit  he  clung  to  certain  hallowed  names  of  men,  about  whom  he 

*'1  was  forever  reiterating  his  emphatic  formulae:  everything  else 

1^  was  naught  and  had  never  been.  When  modern  interests  were  ^ 

I mentioned  he  would  not  listen,  and  talked  of  something  else.  ^ 

f He  declared  that  he  loved  music  passionately,  and  he  would 

ask  Christophe  to  play.  But  as  soon  as  Christophe,  who  « 

had  been  caught  once  or  twice,  began  to  play,  the  old  fellow  ’ 

i ■ would  begin  to  talk  loudly  to  his  daughter,  as  though  ; 

•j  the  music  only  increased  his  interest  in  everything  but  i 

^ music.  Christophe  would  get  up  exasperated  in  the  middle  ' 

of  his  piece,  so  one  would  notice  it.  There  were  only  a few  : 

; ‘ old  airs — three  or  four — some  very  beautiful,  others  very  ugly,  | 

but  all  equally  sacred,  which  were  privileged  to  gain  comparative  i 

silence  and  absolute  approval.  With  the  very  first  notes  the  i 

, old  man  would  go  into  ecstasies,  tears  would  come  to  his  eyes,  1 

not  so  much  for  the  pleasure  he  was  enjoying  as  for  the  pleasure 

which  once  he  had  enjoyed.  In  the  end  Christophe  had 
a horror  of  these  airs,  though  some  of  them,  like  the  Adelaide 
of  Beethoven,  were  very  dear  to  him;  the  old  man  was  always 
humming  the  first  bars  of  them,  and  never  failed  to  declare, 

“ There,  that  is  music,”  contemptuously  comparing  it  with  “ all 
the  blessed  modern  music,  in  which  there  is  no  melody.”  Truth 
, to  tell,  he  knew  nothing  whatever  about  it. 

j His  son-in-law  was  better  educated  and  kept  in  touch  with 
.1  artistic  movements;  but  that  was  even  worse,  for  in  his  judgment 


YOUTH 


229 


there  was  always  a disparaging  tinge.  He  was  lacking  neither 
in  taste  nor  intelligence;  but  he  could  not  bring  himself  to 
admire  anything  modern.  He  would  have  disparaged  Mozart 
and  Beethoven,  if  they  had  been  contemporary,  just  as  he  would 
have  acknowledged  the  merits  of  Wagner  and  Eichard  Strauss 
had  they  been  dead  for  a century.  His  discontented  temper/ 
refused  to  allow  that  there  might  be  great  men  living  during 
his  own  lifetime;  the  idea  was  distasteful  to  him.  He  was  so 
embittered  by  his  wasted  life  that  he  insisted  on  pretending 
that  every  life  was  wasted,  that  it  could  not  be  otherwise,  and 
that  those  who  thought  the  opposite,  or  pretended  to  think  so, 
were  one  of  two  things:  fools  or  humbugs. 

And  so  he  never  spoke  of  any  new  celebrity  except  in  a tone 
of  bitter  irony,  and  as  he  was  not  stupid  he  never  failed  to 
discover  at  the  first  glance  the  weak  or  ridiculous  sides  of  them. 
Any  new  name  roused  him  to  distrust;  before  he  knew  anything 
about  the  man  he  was  inclined  to  criticise  him — ^because  he 
knew  nothing  about  him.  If  he  was  sympathetic  towards 
Christophe  it  was  because  he  thought  that  the  misanthropic 
boy  found  life  as  evil  as  he  did  himself,  and  that  he  was  not 
a genius.  Nothing  so  unites  the  small  of  soul  in  their  suffering 
and  discontent  as  the  statement  of  their  common  impotence. 
Nothing  so  much  restores  the  desire  for  health  or  life  to  those 
who  are  healthy  and  made  for  the  joy  of  life  as  contact 
with  the  stupid  pessimism  of  the  mediocre  and  the  sick,  who, 
because  they  are  not  happy,  deny  the  happiness  of  others. 
Christophe  felt  this.  And  yet  these  gloomy  thoughts  were 
familiar  to  him;  but  he  was  surprised  to  find  them  on  VogeFs 
lips,  where  they  were  unrecognizable ; more  than  that,  they  were 
repugnant  to  him;  they  offended  him. 

He  was  even  more  in  revolt  against  Amalia’s  ways.  The 
good  creature  did  no  more  than  practise  Christophe’s  theories 
of  duty.  The  word  was  upon  her  lips  at  every  turn.  She 
worked  unceasingly,  and  wanted  everybody  to  work  as  she 
did.  Her  work  was  never  directed  towards  making  herself 
and  others  happier;  on  the  contrary.  It  almost  seemed  as 
though  it  was  mainly  intended  to  iucommode  everybody  and 
to  make  life  as  disagreeable  as  possible  so  as  to  sanctify  it. 
Nothing  would  induce  her  for  a moment  to  relinquish  her  holy 


230 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


duties  in  the  household,  that  sacro-sanct  institution  which  in 
so  many  women  takes  the  place  of  all  other  duties,  social  and 
moral.  She  would  have  thought  herself  lost  had  she  not  on 
the  same  day,  at  the  same  time,  polished  the  wooden  floors, 
washed  the  tiles,  cleaned  the  door-handles,  beaten  the  carpets, 
moved  the  chairs,  the  cupboards,  the  tables.  She  was  osten- 
tatious about  it.  It  was  as  though  it  was  a point  of  honor 
with  her.  And  after  all,  is  it  not  in  much  the  same  spirit  that 
many  women  conceive  and  defend  their  honor  ? It  is  a sort 
of  piece  of  furniture  which  they  have  to  keep  polished,  a well 
waxed  floor,  cold,  hard — and  slippery. 

The  accomplishment  of  her  task  did  not  make  Frau  Vogel 
more  amicable.  She  sacrificed  herself  to  the  trivialities  of  the 
household,  as  to  a duty  imposed  by  God.  And  she  despised 
those  who  did  not  do  as  she  did,  those  who  rested,  and  were 
able  to  enjoy  life  a little  in  the  intervals  of  work.  She  would 
go  and  rouse  Louisa  in  her  room  when  from  time  to  time  she  • 

sat  down  in  the  middle  of  her  work  to  dream.  Louisa  would  ; 

sigh,  but  she  submitted  to  it  with  a half -shamed  smile.  Fortu- 
nately, Christophe  knew  nothing  about  it;  Amalia  used  to  , 

wait  until  he  had  gone  out  before  she  made  these  irruptions  | 

into  their  rooms,  and  so  far  she  had  not  directly  attacked  him;  ; 

he  would  not  have  put  up  with  it.  When  he  was  with  her  he  ; 

was  conscious  of  a latent  hostility  within  himself.  What  he 
could  least  forgive  her  was  the  noise  she  made.  He  was  mad-  i 

dened  by  it.  When  he  was  locked  in  his  room — a little  low  { 

room  looking  out  on  the  yard— with  the  window  hermetically  | 

sealed,  in  spite  of  the  want  of  air,  so  as  not  to  hear  the  clatter  1 

in  the  house,  he  could  not  escape  from  it.  Involuntarily  he  I 

was  forced  to  listen  attentively  for  the  least  sound  coming  up  ‘| 

from  below,  and  when  the  terrible  voice  which  penetrated  all  | 
the  walls  broke  out  again  after  a moment  of  silence  he  was 
filled  with  rage;  he  would  shout,  stamp  with  his  foot,  and 
roar  insults  at  her  through  the  wall..  In  the  general  uproar, 
no  one  ever  noticed  it;  they  thought  he  was  composing.  He 
would  consign  Frau  Vogel  to  the  depths  of  hell.  He  had  no 
respect  for  her,  nor  esteem  to  check  him.  At  such  times  it 
seemed  to  him  that  he  would  have  preferred  the  loosest 
and  most  stupid  of  women,  if  only  she  did  not  talk,  to  clev- 


■ 


YOUTH  231 

erness,  honesty,  all  the  virtues,  when  they  make  too  much 
noise. 

His  hatred  of  noise  brought  him  in  touch  with  Leonard. 
In  the  midst  of  the  general  excitement  the  boy  was  the  only 
one  to  keep  calm,  and  never  to  raise  his  voice  more  at  one 
moment  than  another.  He  always  expressed  himself  correctly 
and  deliberately,  choosing  his  words,  and  never  hurrying. 
Amalia,  simmering,  never  had  patience  to  wait  until  he  had 
finished;  the  whole  family  cried  out  upon  his  slowness.  He 
did  not  worry  about  it.  Nothing  could  upset  his  calm,  respect- 
ful deference.  Christophe  was  the  more  attracted  to  him  when 
he  learned  that  Leonard  intended  to  devote  his  life  to  the 
Church,  and  his  curiosity  was  roused. 

With  regard  to  religion,  Christophe  was  in  a queer  posi- 
tion; he  did  not  know  himself  how  he  stood  towards  it.  He 
had  never  had  time  to  think  seriously  about  it.  He  was  not 
well  enough  educated,  and  he  was  too  much  absorbed  by  the 
difficulties  of  existence  to  be  able  to  analyze  himself  and  to 
set  his  ideas  in  order.  His  violence  led  him  from  one  extreme 
to  the  other,  from  absolute  facts  to  complete  negation,  without 
troubling  to  find  out  whether  in  either  case  he  agreed  with 
himself.  When  he  was  happy  he  hardly  thought  of  God  at 
all,  but  he  was  quite  ready  to  believe  in  Him.  When  he  was 
unhappy  he  thought  of  Him,  but  did  not  believe;  it  seemed 
to  him  impossible  that  a God  could  authorize  unhappiness  and 
injustice.  But  these  difficulties  did  not  greatly  exercise  him. 
He  was  too  fundamentally  religious  to  think  much  about  God. 
He  lived  in  God;  he  had  no  need  to  believe  in  Him.  That  is 
well  enough  for  the  weak  and  worn,  for  those  whose  lives  are 
anemic.  They  aspire  to  God,  as  a plant  does  to  the  sun.  The 
dying  cling  to  life.  But  he  who  bears  in  his  soul  the  sun  and 
life,  what  need  has  he  to  seek  them  outside  himself? 

Christophe  would  probably  never  have  bothered  about 
these  questions  had  he  lived  alone.  But  the  obligations  of  social 
life  forced  him  to  bring  his  thoughts  to  bear  on  these  puerile 
and  useless  problems,  which  occupy  a place  out  of  all  proportion 
in  the  world;  it  is  impossible  not  to  take  them  into  account 
since  at  every  step  they  are  in  the  way.  As  if  a healthy,  gen- 
erous creature,  overflowing  with  strength  and  love,  had  not  a 


232 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


thousand  more  worthy  things  to  do  than  to  worry  as  to  whether  • 
God  exists  or  no!  ...  If  it  were  only  a question  of  believing 
in  God!  But  it  is  needful  to  believe  in  a God,  of  whatever 
shape  or  size  and  color  and  race.  So  far  Christophe  never 
gave  a thought  to  the  matter.  Jesus  hardly  occupied  his 
thoughts  at  all.  It  was  not  that  he  did  not  love  him ; he  loved 
him  when  he  thought  of  him:  but  he  never  thought  of  him. 
Sometimes  he  reproached  himself  for  it,  was  angry  with  himself, 
could  not  understand  why  he  did  not  take  more  interest  in  him. 

And  yet  he  professed,  all  his  family  professed;  his  grandfather 
was  forever  reading  the  Bible;  he  went  regularly  to  Mass; 
he  served  it  in  a sort  of  way,  for  he  was  an  organist;  and  he 
set  about  his  task  conscientiously  and  in  an  exemplary  manner. 

But  when  he  left  the  church  he  would  have  been  hard  put  to 
it  to  say  what  he  had  been  thinking  about.  He  set  himself 
to  read  the  Holy  Books  in  order  to  fix  his  ideas,  and  he  found 
amusement  and  even  pleasure  in  them,  just  as  in  any  beautiful  ; 
strange  books,  not  essentially  different  from  other  books,  which  > 
no  one  ever  thinks  of  calling  sacred.  In  truth,  if  Jesus  ap- 
pealed to  him,  Beethoven  did  no  less.  And  at  his  organ  in 
Saint  Florian’s  Church,  where  he  accompanied  on  Sundays,  he  ; 

was  more  taken  up  with  his  organ  than  with  Mass,  and  he  | 

was  more  religious  when  he  played  Bach  than  when  he  played  ■ 

Mendelssohn.  Some  of  the  ritual  brought  him  to  a fervor  of  j 

exaltation.  But  did  he  then  love  God,  or  was  it  only  the  music,  ■ 

as  an  impudent  priest  said  to  him  one  day  in  Jest,  without  ] 

, thinking  of  the  unhappiness  which  his  quip  might  cause  in  I 

I him?  Anybody  else  would  not  have  paid  any  attention  to  it,  < 

1 and  would  not  have  changed  his  mode  of  living — (so  many  ; 

I people  put  up  with  not  knowing  what  they  think!)  But 
t'  Christophe  was  cursed  with  an  awkward  need  for  sincerity, 
which  filled  him  with  scruples  at  every  turn.  And  when  scruples 
came  to  him  they  possessed  him  forever.  He  tortured  himself; 
he  thought  that  he  had  acted  with  duplicity.  Did  he  believe 
or  did  he  not  ? ...  He  had  no  means,  material  or  intellectual— 
(knowledge  and  leisure  are  necessary) — of  solving  the  prob- 
lem by  himself.  And  yet  it  had  to  be  solved,  or  he  was  either 
indifferent  or  a hypocrite.  Now,  he  was  incapable  of  being 
either  one  or  the  other. 


YOUTH 


233 


He  tried  timidly  to  sound  those  about  him-  They  all  seemed 
to  be  sure  of  themselves.  Christophe  burned  to  know  their 
reasons.  He  could  not  discover  them.  Hardly  did  he  receive 
a definite  answer;  they  always  talked  obliquely.  Some  thought 
him  arrogant,  and  said  that  there  is  no  arguing  these  things, 
that  thousands  of  men  cleverer  and  better  than  himself  had 
believed  without  argument,  and  that  he  needed  only  to  do  as 
they  had  done.  There  were  some  who  were  a little  hurt,  as 
though  it  were  a personal  affront  to  ask  them  such  a question, 
and  yet  they  were  of  all  perhaps  the  least  certain  of  their  facts. 
Others  shrugged  their  shoulders  and  said  with  a smile : “ Bah ! 
it  can’t  do  any  harm.”  And  their  smile  said : “ And  it  is  so 
useful ! . . .”  Christophe  despised  them  with  all  his  heart. 

He  had  tried  to  lay  his  uncertainties  before  a priest,  but 
he  was  discouraged  by  the  experiment.  He  could  not  discuss 
the  matter  seriously  with  him.  Though  his  interlocution  was 
quite  pleasant,  he  made  Christophe  feel,  quite  politely,  that 
there  was  no  real  equality  between  them;  he  seemed  to 
assume  in  advance  that  his  superiority  was  beyond  dispute,  and 
that  the  discussion  could  not  exceed  the  limits  which  he  laid 
down  for  it,  without  a kind  of  impropriety;  it  was  just  a 
fencing  bout,  and  was  quite  inoffensive.  When  Christophe 
wished  to  exceed  the  limits  and  to  ask  questions,  which  the 
worthy  man  was  pleased  not  to  answer,  he  stepped  back  with 
a patronizing  smile,  and  a few  Latin  quotations,  and  a fatherly 
objurgation  to  pray,  pray  that  God  would  enlighten  him. 
Christophe  issued  from  the  interview  humiliated  and  wounded 
by  his  love  of  polite  superiority.  Wrong  or  right,  he  would 
never  again  for  anything  in  the  world  have  recourse  to  a priest. 
He  admitted  that  these  men  were  his  superiors  in  intelligence  , 
or  by  reason  of  their  sacred  calling ; but  in  argument  there  is  j 
neither  superiority,  nor  inferiority,  nor  title,  nor  age,  nor  name ; | 
nothing  is  of  worth  but  truth,  before  which  all  men  are  equal. 

So  he  was  glad  to  find  a boy  of  his  own  age  who  believed. 
He  asked  no  more  than  belief,  and  he  hoped  that  Leonard 
would  give  him  good  reason  for  believing.  He  made  advances 
to  him.  Leonard  replied  with  his  usual  gentleness,  but  without 
eagerness;  he  was  never  eager  about  anything.  As  they  could 
not  carry  on  a long  conversation  in  the  house  without  being 


:234 


JEAN-CHKISTOPHE 


interrupted  every  moment  by  Amalia  or  the  old  man,  Chris- 
tophe  proposed  that  they  should  go  for  a walk  one  evening 
after  dinner.  Leonard  was  too  polite  to  refuse,  although  he 
would  gladly  have  got  out  of  it,  for  his  indolent  nature  dis- 
liked walking,  talking,  and  anything  that  cost  him  an  effort. 

Christophe  had  some  difficulty  in  opening  up  the  con- 
versation. After  two  or  three  awkward  sentences  about  triviali- 
ties he  plunged  with  a brusqueness  that  was  almost  brutal.  He 
asked  Leonard  if  he  were  really  going  to  be  a priest,  and  if 
he  liked  the  idea.  Leonard  was  nonplussed,  and  looked  at  him 
uneasily,  but  when  he  saw  that  Christophe  was  not  hos- 
tilely  disposed  he  was  reassured. 

Yes,^^  he  replied.  ^^How  could  it  be  otherwise 

Ah ! said  Christophe.  You  are  very  happy Leonard 
was  conscious  of  a shade  of  envy  in  Christophers  voice  and  was 
agreeably  flattered  by  it.  He  altered  his  manner,  became  ex- 
pansive, his  face  brightened. 

Yes,rr  he  said,  I am  happy. He  beamed. 

What  do  you  do  to  be  so  ? asked  Christophe. 

Before  replying  Leonard  proposed  that  they  should  sit  down 
on  a quiet  seat  in  the  cloisters  of  St.  Martin’s.  From  there 
they  could  see  a corner  of  the  little  square,  planted  with  acacias, 
and  beyond  it  the  town,  the  country,  bathed  in  the  evening 
mists.  The  Ehine  flowed  at  the  foot  of  the  hill.  An  old 
deserted  cemetery,  with  graves  lost  under  the  rich  grass,  lay 
in  slumber  beside  them  behind  the  closed  gates. 

Leonard  began  to  talk.  He  said,  with  his  eyes  shining  with 
contentment,  how  happy  he  was  to  escape  from  life,  to  have 
found  a refuge,  where  a man  is,  and  forever  will  be,  in  shelter. 
Christophe,  still  sore  from  his  wounds,  felt  passionately  the 
desire  for  rest  and  forgetfulness ; but  it  was  mingled  with  regret. 
He  asked  with  a sigh : 

And  yet,  does  it  cost  you  nothing  to  renounce  life  alto- 
gether ? ” 


i 

I 

i 

i 

1 


^^Oh!”  said  Leonard  quietly.  ^^What  is  there  to  regret? 
Isn’t  life  sad  and  ugly  ? ” 

There  are  lovely  things  too,”  said  Christophe,  looking  at 
the  beautiful  evening. 

There  are  some  beautiful  things,  but  very  few.” 


YOUTH 


235 


The  few  that  there  are  are  yet  many  to  me/^ 

Oh,  well ! it  is  simply  a matter  of  common  sense.  On  the 
one  hand  a little  good  and  much  evil ; on  the  other  neither  good, 
nor  evil  on  earth,  and  after,  infinite  happiness — how  can  one 
hesitate 

Christophe  was  not  very  pleased  with  this  sort  of  arith- 
metic. So  economic  a life  seemed  to  him  very  poor.  But  he 

tried  to  persuade  himself  that  it  was  wisdom. 

So,''  he  asked  a little  ironically,  there  is  no  risk  of  your 
being  seduced  by  an  hour's  pleasure?" 

How  foolish ! When  you  know  that  it  is  only  an  hour,  and 
that  after  it  there  is  all  eternity!" 

^^You  are  quite  certain  of  eternity?" 

Of  course." 

Christophe  questioned  him.  He  was  thrilled  with  hope 

and  desire.  Perhaps  Leonard  would  at  last  give  him  im- 

pregnable reasons  for  believing.  With  what  a passion  he  would 
himself  renounce  all  the  world  to  follow  him  to  God. 

At  first  Leonard,  proud  of  his  role  of  apostle,  and  convinced 
that  Christophe's  doubts  were  only  a matter  of  form,  and 
that  they  would  of  course  give  way  before  his  first  argu- 
ments, relied  upon  the  Holy  Books,  the  authority  of  the  Gospel,, 
the  miracles,  and  traditions.  But  he  began  to  grow  gloomy 
when,  after  Christophe  had  listened  for  a few  minutes, 
he  stopped  him  and  said  that  he  was  answering  questions  with 
questions,  and  that  he  had  not  asked  him  to  tell  exactly  what 
it  was  that  he  was  doubting,  but  to  give  some  means  of  resolv- 
ing his  doubts.  Leonard  then  had  to  realize  that  Christophe 
was  much  more  ill  than  he  seemed,  and  that  he  would 
only  allow  himself  to  be  convinced  by  the  light  of  reason.  But 
he  still  thought  that  Christophe  was  playing  the  free 
thinker — (it  never  occurred  to  him  that  he  might  be  so  sin- 
cerely).— He  was  not  discouraged,  and,  strong  in  his  recently 
acquired  knowledge,  he  turned  back  to  his  school  learning:  he 
unfolded  higgledy,  piggledy,  with  more  authority  than  order, 
his  metaphysical  proofs  of  the  existence  of  God  and  the  im- 
mortality of  the  soul.  Christophe,  with  his  mind  at  stretch, 
and  his  brow  knit  in  the  effort,  labored  in  silence,  and  made 
him  say  it  all  over  again;  tried  hard  to  gather  the  mean- 


236 


JEAN-CHBISTOPHE 


ing,  and  to  take  it  to  himself,  and  to  follow  the  reason-  I 

ing.  Then  suddenly  he  burst  out,  vowed  that  Leonard 
was  laughing  at  him,  that  it  was  all  tricks,  jests  of  the  fine 
talkers  who  forged  words  and  then  amused  themselves  with 
pretending  that  these  words  were  things.  Leonard  was  nettled, 
and  guaranteed  the  good  faith  of  his  authors.  Christophe 
shrugged  his  shoulders,  and  said  with  an  oath  that  they  were 
only  humbugs,  infernal  writers ; and  he  demanded  fresh  proof. 

Leonard  perceived  to  his  horror  that  Christophe  was 
incurably  attainted,  and  took  no  more  interest  in  him.  He 
remembered  that  he  had  been  told  not  to  waste  his  time  in 
arguing  with  skeptics, — at  least  when  they  stubbornly  refuse 
to  believe.  There  was  the  risk  of  being  shaken  himself,  without 
profiting  the  other.  It  was  better  to  leave  the  unfortunate 
fellow  to  the  will  of  God,  who,  if  He  so  designs,  would  see  to  ‘ 
it  that  the  skeptic  was  enlightened:  or  if  not,  who  would  «| 
dare  to  go  against  the  will  of  God?  Leonard  did  not  insist 
then  on  carrying  on  the  discussion.  He  only  said  gently  that 
for  the  time  being  there  was  nothing  to  be  done,  that  no  reason-  ^ 
ing  could  show  the  way  to  a man  who  was  determined  not  to  i 
see  it,  and  that  Jean-Christophe  must  pray  and  appeal  to  • 
Grace : nothing  is  possible  without  that : he  must  desire  grace, 
and  the  will  to  believe. 

‘ ''The  will,''  thought  Christophe  bitterly.  "So  then,  God  ; 
will  exist  because  I will  Him  to  exist?  So  then,  death  will  { 
not  exist,  because  it  pleases  me  to  deny  it!  . . . Alas!  How  | 
easy  life  is  to  those  who  have  no  need  to  see  the  truth,  to  those  ) 
who  can  see  what  they  wish  to  see,  and  are  forever  forging  i 
pleasant  dreams  in  which  softly  to  sleep ! " In  such  a bed, 
Christophe  knew  well  that  he  would  never  sleep.  . . . 

Leonard  went  on  talking.  He  had  fallen  back  on  his  favorite 
subject,  the  sweets  of  the  contemplative  life,  and  once  on  this 
neutral  ground,  he  was  inexhaustible.  In  his  monotonous  voice, 
that  shook  with  the  pleasure  in  him,  he  told  of  the  joys  of 
the  life  in  God,  outside,  above  the  world,  far  from  noise,  of 
w’hich  he  spoke  in  a sudden  tone  of  hatred  (he  detested  it 
almost  as  much  as  Christophe),  far  from  violence,  far 
from  friyolit}%  far  from  the  little  miseries  that  one  has  to 
suffer  every  day,  in  the  warm,  secure  nest  of  faith,  from  which 


YOUTH 


237 


you  can  contemplate  in  peace  the  wretchedness  of  a strange 
and  distant  world.  And  as  Christophe  listened,  he  per- 
ceived the  egoism  of  that  faith.  Leonard  saw  that.  He  hur- 
riedly explained:  the  contemplative  life  was  not  a lazy  life-^ 
On  the  contrary,  a man  is  more  active  in  prayer  than  in  action.  / 
What  would  the  world  be  without  prayer?  You  expiate  the 
sins  of  others,  you  bear  the  burden  of  their  misdeeds,  you 
offer  up  your  talents,  you  intercede  between  the  world  and 
God. 

Christophe  listened  in  silence  with  increasing  hostility. 
He  was  conscious  of  the  hypocrisy  of  such  renunciation  in 
Leonard.  He  was  not  unjust  enough  to  assume  hypocrisy  in 
all  those  who  believe.  He  knew  well  that  with  a few,  such 
abdication  of  life  comes  from  the  impossibility  of  living,  from 
a bitter  despair,  an  appeal  to  death, — ^that  with  still  fewer, 
it  is  an  ecstasy  of  passion.  . . . (How  long  does  it  last?)  . . . 
But  with  the  majority  of  men  is  it  not  too  often  the  cold  reason- 
ing of  souls  more  busied  with  their  own  ease  and  peace  than 
with  the  happiness  of  others,  or  with  truth?  And  if  sincere 
men  are  conscious  of  it,  how  much  they  must  suffer  by  such 
profanation  of  their  ideal!  ... 

Leonard  was  quite  happy,  and  now  set  forth  the  beauty  and 
harmony  of  the  world,  seen  from  the  loftiness  of  the  divine 
roost:  below  all  was  dark,  unjust,  sorrowful;  seen  from  on 
high,  it  all  became  clear,  luminous,  ordered:  the  world  was 
like  the  works  of  a clock,  perfectly  ordered.  ... 

Now  Christophe  only  listened  absently.  He  was  asking 
himself : “ Does  he  believe,  or  does  he  believe  that  he  believes  ? ” 
And  yet  his  own  faith,  his  own  passionate  desire  for  faith  was 
not  shaken.  Not  the  mediocrity  of  soul,  and  the  poverty  of 
argument  of  a fool  like  Leonard  could  touch  that.  ... 

Night  came  down  over  the  town.  The  seat  on  which  they 
were  sitting  was  in  darkness : the  stars  shone  out,  a white  mist 
came  up  from  the  river,  the  crickets  chirped  under  the  trees 
in  the  cemetery.  The  bells  began  to  ring:  first  the  highest  of 
them,  alone,  like  a plaintive  bird,  challenging  the  sky:  then 
the  second,  a third  lower,  joined  in  its  plaint:  at  last  came 
the  deepest,  on  the  fifth,  and  seemed  to  answer  them.  The 
three  voices  were  merged  in  each  other.  At  the  bottom  of  the 


238 


JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 


towers  there  was  a buzzing,  as  of  a gigantic  hive  of  bees.  The 
air  and  the  boy’s  heart  quivered.  Christophe  held  his  breath, 
and  thought  how  poor  was  the  music  of  musicians  com- 
pared with  such  an  ocean  of  music,  with  all  the  sounds  of 
thousands  of  creatures:  the  former,  the  free  world  of  sounds, 
compared  with  the  world  tamed,  catalogued,  coldly  labeled  by  | 
human  intelligence.  He  sank  and  sank  into  that  sonorous  and 
immense  world  without  continents  or  bounds.  . . . 

And  when  the  great  murmuring  had  died  away,  when  the 
air  had  ceased  at  last  to  quiver,  Christophe  woke  up. 

He  looked  about  him  startled.  . . . He  knew  nothing.  Around 
him  and  in  him  everything  was  changed.  There  was  no 
God.  ... 

As  with  faith,  so  the  loss  of  faith  is  often  equally  a flood 
of  grace,  a sudden  light.  Eeason  counts  for  nothing:  the  - 
smallest  thing  is  enough — a word,  silence,  the  sound  of  bells.  « 
A man  walks,  dreams,  expects  nothing.  Suddenly  the  world  ; 
crumbles  away.  All  about  him  is  in  ruins.  He  is  alone.  He  i 
no  longer  believes.  . 

Christophe  was  terrifled,  and  could  not  understand  how  ^ 
it  had  come  about.  It  was  like  the  flooding  of  a river  in  the  ! 
spring.  ... 

Leonard’s  voice  was  still  sounding,  more  monotonous  than  . 
the  voice  of  a cricket.  Christophe  did  not  hear  it:  he  heard  ; 
nothing.  Night  was  fully  come.  Leonard  stopped.  Surprised  j 
to  And  Christophe  motionless,  uneasy  because  of  the  lateness  | 
of  the  hour,  he  suggested  that  they  should  go  home.  Christophe  ) 
did  not  reply.  Leonard  took  his  arm.  Christophe  trembled,  i 
and  looked  at  Leonard  with  wild  eyes.  i 

Christophe,  we  must  go  home,”  said  Leonard. 

Go  to  hell ! ” cried  Christophe  furiously. 

Oh ! Christophe ! What  have  I done  ? ” asked  Leonard 
tremulously.  He  was  dumfounded. 

Christophe  came  to  himself. 

Yes.  You  are  right,”  he  said  more  gently.  I do  not 
know  what  I’m  saying.  Go  to  God ! Go  to  God ! ” 

He  was  alone.  He  was  in  bitter  distress. 

^^Ah!  my  God!  my  God!”  he  cried,  wringing  his  hands, 
passionately  raising  his  face  to  the  dark  sky.  Wiy  do  I no 


YOUTH 


239 


longer  believe?  Why  can  I believe  no  more?  What  has  hap- 
pened to  me?  . . . j.  • 1.  j XU 

The  disproportion  between  the  wreck  of  his  faith  and  the 

conversation  that  he  had  just  had  with  Leonard  was  too  great: 
it  was  obvious  that  the  conversation  had  no  more  brought  it 
about  than  that  the  boisterousness  of  Amalia’s  gabble  and  the 
pettiness  of  the  people  with  whom  he  lived  were  not  the  cause 
of  the  upheaval  which  for  some  days  had  been  taking  place 
in  his  moral  resolutions.  These  were  only  pretexts.  The  un- 
easiness had  not  come  from  without.  It  "was  within  himself. 
He  felt  stirring  in  his  heart  monstrous  and  unknown  things, 
and  he  dared  not  rely  on  his  thoughts  to  face  the  evil.  The 
evil?  Was  it  evil?  A languor,  an  intoxication,  a voluptuous 
agony  filled  all  his  being.  He  was  no  longer  master  of  him- 
self. In  vain  he  sought  to  fortify  himself  with  his  former 
stoicism.  His  whole  being  crashed  down.  He  had  a sudden 
consciousness  of  the  vast  world,  burning,  wild,  a world  immeas- 
urable. . . . How  it  swallows  up  God ! 

Only  for  a moment.  But  the  whole  balance  of  his  old  life 
was  in  that  moment  destroyed. 

There  was  only  one  person  in  the  family  to  whom  Christophe 
paid  no  attention:  this  was  little  Kosa.  She  was  not  beau- 
tiful: and  Christophe,  who  was  far  from  beautiful  himself, 
was  very  exacting  of  beauty  in  others.  He  had  that  calm 
cruelty  of  youth,  for  which  a woman  does  not  exist  if  she 
be  ugly, — unless  she  has  passed  the  age  for  inspiring  tender- 
ness, and  there  is  then  no  need  to  feel  for  her  anything 
but  grave,  peaceful,  and  quasi-religious  sentiments.  Eosa  also 
was  not  distinguished  by  any  especial  gift,  although  she  was 
not  without  intelligence:  and  she  was  cursed  with  a chattering 
tongue  which  drove  Christophe  from  her.  And  he  had  never 
taken  the  trouble  to  know  her,  thinking  that  there  was  in  her 
nothing  to  know;  and  the  most  he  ever  did  was  to  glance 
at  her. 

But  she  was  of  better  stuff  than  most  girls : she  was  certainly 
better  than  Minna,  whom  he  had  so  loved.  She  was  a good 
girl,  no  coquette,  not  at  all  vain,  and  until  Christophe  came 
it  had  never  occurred  to  her  that  she  was  plain,  or  if  it  had, 


240 


JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 


it  had  not  worried  her:  for  none  of  her  family  bothered 
about  it.  Whenever  her  grandfather  or  her  mother  told  her 
so  out  of  a desire  to  grumble,  she  only  laughed:  she  did  not 
believe  it,  or  she  attached  no  importance  to  it:  nor  did  they. 

So  many  others,  just  as  plain,  and  more,  had  found  some  one 
to  love  them!  The  Germans  are  very  mildly  indulgent  ta 
physical  imperfections:  they  cannot  see  them:  they  are  even 
able  to  embellish  them,  by  virtue  of  an  easy  imagination  which 
finds  unexpected  qualities  in  the  face  of  their  desire  to  make 
fhem  like  the  most  illustrious  examples  of  human  beauty.  Old 
Euler  would  not  have  needed  much  urging  to  make  him  declare 
that  his  granddaughter  had  the  nose  of  the  Juno  Ludovisi. 
Happily  he  was  too  grumpy  to  pay  compliments:  and  Eosa, 
unconcerned  about  the  shape  of  her  nose,  had  no  vanity  except 
in  the  accomplishment,  with  all  the  ritual,  of  the  famous  house- 
hold duties.  She  had  accepted  as  Gospel  all  that  she  had  been 
taught.  She  hardly  ever  went  out,  and  she  had  very  little 
standard  of  comparison;  she  admired  her  family  naively,  and  | 
believed  what  they  said.  She  was  of  an  expansive  and  con- 
fiding nature,  easily  satisfied,  and  tried  to  fall  in  with  the  t 
mournfulness  of  her  home,  and  docilely  used  to  repeat  the  | 
pessiriiistic  ideas  which  she  heard.  She  was  a creature  of  ; 
devotion — always  thinking  of  others,  trying  to  please,  sharing  ; 
anxieties,  guessing  at  what  others  wanted;  she  had  a great  * 
need  of  loving  without  demanding  anything  in  return.  Nat-  > 
urally  her  family  took  advantage  of  her,  although  they  were  ( 
kind  and  loved  her:  but  there  is  always  a temptation  to  take  i 
advantage  of  the  love  of  those  who  are  absolutely  delivered 
into  your  hands.  Her  family  were  so  sure  of  her  attentions  ] 
that  they  were  not  at  all  grateful  for  them:  whatever  she  did, 
they  expected  more.  And  then,  she  was  clumsy;  she  was  awk- 
ward and  hasty;  her  movements  were  jerky  and  boyish;  she 
had  outbursts  of  tenderness  w’hich  used  to  end  in  disaster:  a 
broken  glass,  a jug  upset,  a door  slammed  to : things  which 
let  loose  upon  her  the  wrath  of  everybody  in  the  house.  She 
was  always  being  snubbed  and  would  go  and  weep  in  a corner. 
Her  tears  did  not  last  long.  She  would  soon  smile  again,  and 
begin  to  chatter  without  a suspicion  of  rancor  against  any- 
body. 


YOUTH 


241 


Christophe’s  advent  was  an  important  event  in  her  life. 
She  had  often  heard  of  him.  Christophe  had  some  place 
in  the  gossip  of  the  town : he  was  a sort  of  little  local  celebrity . 
his  name  used  often  to  recur  in  the  family  conversation,  espe- 
cially when  old  Jean  Michel  was  alive,  who,  proud  of  his  grand- 
son, used  to  sing  his  praises  to  all  of  his  acquaintance.  Eosa 
had  seen  the  young  musician  once  or  twice  at  concerts.  When 
she  heard  that  he  was  coming  to  live  with  them,  she  clapped 
her  hands.  She  was  sternly  rebuked  for  her  breach  of  man- 
ners and  became  confused.  She  saw  no  harm  in  it.  In  a life 
so  monotonous  as  hers,  a new  lodger  was  a great  distraction. 
She  spent  the  last  few  days  before  his  arrival  in  a fever  of 
expectancy.  She  was  fearful  lest  he  should  not  like  the  house, 
and  she  tried  hard  to  make  every  room  as  attractive  as'  possible. 
On  the  morning  of  his  arrival,  she  even  put  a little  bunch  of 
flowers  on  the  mantelpiece  to  bid  him  welcome.  As  to  herself, 
she  took  no  care  at  all  to  look  her  best  j and  one  glance  was 
enough  to  make  Christophe  decide  that  she  was  plain, 
and  slovenly  dressed.  She  did  not  think  the  same  of  him, 
though  she  had  good  reason  to  do  so ; for  Christophe, 
busy,  exhausted,  ill-kempt,  was  even  more  ugly  than  usual. 
But  Eosa,  who  was  incapable  of  thinking  the  least  ill  of  any- 
body, Eosa,  who  thought  her  grandfather,  her  father,  and  her 
mother,  all  perfectly  beautiful,  saw  Christophe  exactly  as 
she  had  expected  to  see  him,  and  admired  him  with  all  her 
heart.  She  was  frightened  at  sitting  next  to  him  at  table ; and 
unfortunately  her  shyness  took  the  shape  of  a flood  of  words, 
which  at  once  alienated  Christophe’s  sympathies.  She  did 
not  see  this,  and  that  first  evening  remained  a shining  memory 
in  her  life.  When  she  was  alone  in  her  room,  after 
they  had  all  gone  upstairs,  she  heard  the  tread  of  the  new 
lodgers  as  they  walked  over  her  head;  and  the  sound  of  it 
ran  joyously  through  her;  the  house  seemed  to  her  to  have 
taken  new  life. 

The  next  morning  for  the  first  time  in  her  life  she  looked 
at  herself  in  the  mirror  carefully  and  uneasily,  and  without 
exactly  knowing  the  extent  of  her  misfortune  she  began  to 
be  conscious  of  it.  She  tried  to  decide  about  her  features, 
one  by  one ; but  she  could  not.  She  was  filled  with  sadness 


243 


JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 


and  apprehension.  She  sighed  deeply,  and  thought  of  intro- 
ducing certain  changes  in  her  toilet,  but  she  only  made  herself 
look  still  more  plain.  She  conceived  the  unlucky  idea  of 
overwhelming  Christophe  with  her  kindness.  In  her  naive 
desire  to  be  always  seeing  her  new  friends,  and  doing  them 
service,  she  was  forever  going  up  and  down  the  stairs,  bringing 
them  some  utterly  useless  thing,  insisting  on  helping  them, 
and  always  laughing  and  talking  and  shouting.  Her  zeal  and 
her  stream  of  talk  could  only  be  interrupted  by  her  mother’s 
impatient  voice  calling  her.  Christophe  looked  grim ; but 
for  his  good  resolutions  he  must  have  lost  his  temper  quite 
twenty  times.  He  restrained  himself  for  two  days ; on  the 
third,  he  locked  his  door.  Eosa  knocked,  called,  understood, 
went  downstairs  in  dismay,  and  did  not  try  again.  When  he 
saw  her  he  explained  ,that  he  was  very  busy  and  could  not  . 
be  disturbed.  She  humbly  begged  his  pardon.  She  could  not 
deceive  herself  as  to  the  failure  of  her  innocent  advances:  they  ■ 
had  accomplished  the  opposite  of  her  intention : they  had  j 
alienated  Christophe.  He  no  longer  took  the  trouble  to  con- 
ceal his  ill-humor;  he  did  not  listen  when  she  talked,  and  did  1 
not  disguise  his  impatience.  She  felt  that  her  chatter  irritated  ^ 
him,  and  by  force  of  will  she  succeeded  in  keeping  silent  for  • 
a part  of  the  evening : but  the  thing  was  stronger  than  herself : ’ 
suddenly  she  would  break  out  again  and  her  words  would  ^ 
tumble  over  each  other  more  tumultuously  than  ever.  Chris-  '■ 
tophe  would  leave  her  in  the  middle  of  a sentence.  She  was  | 
not  angry  with  him.  She  was  angry  with  herself.  She  thought  I 
herself  stupid,  tiresome,  ridiculous : all  her  faults  assumed 
enormous  proportions  and  she  tried  to  wrestle  with  them:  but  j 
she  was  discouraged  by  the  check  upon  her  first  attempts,  and 
said  to  herself  that  she  could  not  do  it,  that  she  was  not  strong 
enough.  But  she  would  try  again. 

But  there  were  other  faults  against  which  she  was  powerless : 
what  could  she  do  against  her  plainness?  There  was  no  doubt 
about  it.  The  certainty  of  her  misfortune  had  suddenly  been 
revealed  to  her  one  day  when  she  was  looking  at  herself  in 
the  mirror;  it  came  like  a thunderclap.  Of  course  she  exag- 
gerated the  evil,  and  saw  her  nose  as  ten  times  larger  than 
it  was;  it  seemed  to  her  to  fill  all  her  face;  she  dared  not 


YOUTH 


243 


show  herself;  she  wished  to  die.  But  there  is  in  youth  such 
a power  of  hope  that  these  fits  of  discouragement  never  lasted 
long : she  would  end  by  pretending  that  she  had  been  mistaken ; 
she  would  try  to  believe  it,  and  for  a moment  or  two  would 
actually  succeed  in  thinking  her  nose  quite  ordinary  and  almost 
shapely.  Her  instinct  made  her  attempt,  though  very  clumsily, 
certain  childish  tricks,  a way  of  doing  her  hair  so  as  not  so 
much  to  show  her  forehead  and  so  accentuate  the  disproportion 
of  her  face.  And  yet,  there  was  no  coquetry  in  her ; no  thought 
of  love  had  crossed  her  mind,  or  she  was  unconscious  of  it. 
She  asked  little : nothing  but  a little  friendship : but  Christophe 
did  not  show  any  inclination  to  give  her  that  little.  It  seemed 
to  Eosa  that  she  would  have  been  perfectly  happy  had  he  only 
condescended  to  say  good-day  when  they  met.  A friendly  good- 
evening with^a  little  kindness.  But  Christophe  usually  looked 
so  hard  and  so  cold!  It  chilled  her.  He  never  said  anything 
disagreeable  to  her,  but  she  would  rather  have  had  cruel  re- 
proaches than  such  cruel  silence. 

One  evening  Christophe  was  playing  his  piano.  He  had 
taken  up  his  quarters  in  a little  attic  at  the  top  of  the  house 
so  as  not  to  be  so  much  disturbed  by  the  noise.  Downstairs 
Eosa  was  listening  to  him,  deeply  moved.  She  loved  music 
though  her  taste  was  bad  and  unformed.  While  her  mother 
was  there,  she  stayed  in  a corner  of  the  room  and  bent  over 
her  sewing,  apparently  absorbed  in  her  work ; but  her  heart  was 
with  the  sounds  coming  from  upstairs,  and  she  wished  to  miss 
nothing.  As  soon  as  Amalia  went  out  for  a walk  in  the  neigh- 
borhood, Eosa  leaped  to  her  feet,  threw  down  her  sewing,  and 
went  upstairs  with  her  heart  beating  until  she  came  to  the 
attic  door.  She  held  her  breath  and  laid  her  ear  against  the 
door.  She  stayed  like  that  until  Amalia  returned.  She  went 
on  tiptoe,  taking  care  to  make  no  noise,  but  as  she  was  not 
very  sure-footed,  and  was  always  in  a hurry,  she  was  always 
tripping  upon  the  stairs;  and  once  while  she  was  listening, 
leaning  forward  with  her  cheek  glued  to  the  keyhole,  she  lost 
her  balance,  and  banged  her  forehead  against  the  door.  She 
was  so  alarmed  that  she  lost  her  breath.  The  piano  stopped 
dead:  she  could  not  escape.  She  was  getting  up  when  the 
door  opened.  Christophe  saw  her,  glared  at  her  furiously,  and 


244  JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 

then  without  a word,  brushed  her  aside,  walked  angrily  down- 
stairs, and  went  out.  He  did  not  return  until  dinner  time, 
paid  no  heed  to  the  despairing  looks  with  which  she  asked  his 
pardon,  ignored  her  existence,  and  for  several  weeks  he  never 
played  at  all.  Kosa  secretly  shed  many  tears;  no  one  noticed 
it,  no  one  paid  any  attention  to  her.  Ardently  she  prayed  to 
God  . . ..for  what?  She  did  not  know.  She  had  to  confide 
her  grief  in  some  one.  She  was  sure  that  Christophe  detested 

And,  in  spite  of  all,  she  hoped.  It  was  enough  for  her  if 
Christophe  seemed  to  show  any  sign  of  interest  in  her,  if  he 
appeared  to  listen  to  what  she  said,  if  he  pressed  her  hand 
with  a little  more  friendliness  than  usual.  ... 

A few  imprudent  words  from  her  relations  set  her  imagina- 
tion off  upon  a false  road. 

The  whole  family  was  filled  with  sympathy  for  Christophe. ; 
The  big  boy  of  sixteen,  serious  and  solitary,  who  had  such  lofty , 
ideas  of  his  duty,  inspired  a sort  of  respect  in  them  all.  His  ^ 
fits  of  ill-temper,  his  obstinate  silences,  his  gloomy  air,  his. 
brusque  manner,  were  not  surprising  in  such  a house  as  that., 
Frau  Vogel,  herself,  who  regarded  every  artist  as  a loafer,  dared  ^ 
not  reproach  him  aggressively,  as  she  would  have  liked  to  do,^ 
with  the  hours  that  he  spent  in  star-gazing  in  the  evening,, 
leaning,  motionless,  out  of  the  attic  window  overlooking  the^ 
yard,  until  night  fell;  for  she  knew  that  during  the  rest  of  thOj 
day  he  was  hard  at  work  with  his  lessons;  and  she  humored.* 
him— like  the  rest— for  an  ulterior  motive  which  no  one  ex~ 
pressed  though  everybody  knew  it.  ^ _ i 

Eosa  had  seen  her  parents  exchanging  looks  and  mysterious 
whisperings  when  she  was  talking  to  Christophe.  At  first  she 
took  no  notice  of  it.  Then  she  was  puzzled  and  roused  by 
it;  she  longed  to  know  what  they  were  saying,  but  dared  not 
^sk* 

One  evening  when  she  had  climbed  on  to  a' garden  seat  to 
untie  the  clothes-line  hung  between  two  trees,  she  leaned  on 
Christophe’s  shoulder  to  jump  down.  Just  at  that  moment 
her  eyes  met  her  grandfather’s  and  her  father’s;  they  were 
sitting  smoking  their  pipes,  and  leaning  against  the  wail  oi 


YOUTH  245 

the  house.  The  two  men  winked  at  each  other,  and  Justus 
Euler  said  to  Vogel: 

They  will  make  a fine  couple.^^ 

Vogel  nudged  him,  seeing  that  the  girl  was  listening,  and 
he  covered  his  remark  very  cleverly — (or  so  he  thought) — with 
a loud  Hm ! hm ! that  could  have  been  heard  twenty  yards 
away.  Christophe,  whose  back  was  turned,  saw  nothing,  but 
Eosa  was  so  bowled  over  by  it  that  she  forgot  that  she  was 
jumping  down,  and  sprained  her  foot.  She  would  have  fallen 
had  not  Christophe  caught  her,  muttering  curses  on  her  clumsi- 
ness. She  had  hurt  herself  badly,  but  she  did  not  show  it; 
she  hardly  thought  of  it;  she  thought  only  of  what  she  had 
just  heard.  She  walked  to  her  room;  every  step  was  agony  to 
her;  she  stiffened  herself  against  it  so  as  not  to  let  it  be  seen. 
A delicious,  vague  uneasiness  surged  through  her.  She  fell 
into  a chair  at  the  foot  of  her  bed  and  hid  her  face  in  the 
coverlet.  Her  cheeks  were  burning;  there  were  tears  in  her 
eyes,  and  she  laughed.  She  was  ashamed,  she  wished  to  sink 
into  the  depths  of  the  earth,  she  could  not  fix  her  ideas;  her 
blood  beat  in  her  temples,  there  were  sharp  pains  in  her  ankle; 
-she  was  in  a feverish  stupor.  Vaguely  she  heard  sounds  out- 
side, children  crying  and  playing  in  the  street,  and  her  grand- 
father^’s  words  were  ringing  in  her  ears;  she  was  thrilled,  she 
laughed  softly,  she  blushed,  with  her  face  buried  in  the  eider- 
down: she  prayed,  gave  ^lanks,  desired,  feared — she  loved. 

Her  mother  called  her.  She  tried  to  get  up.  At  the  first 
step  she  felt  a pain  so  unbearable  that  she  almost  fainted;  her 
head  swam.  She  thought  she  was  going  to  die,  she  wished  to 
die,  and  at  the  same  time  she  wished  to  live  with  all  the  forces 
of  her  being,  to  live  for  the  promised  happiness.  Her  mother 
came  at  last,  and  the  whole  household  was  soon  excited.  She 
was  scolded  as  usual,  her  ankle  was  dressed,  she  was  put  to 
bed,  and  sank  into  the  sweet  bewilderment  of  her  physical  pain 
and  her  inward  joy.  The  night  was  sweet.  . . . The  smallest 
memory  of  that  dear  evening  was  hallowed  for  her.  She  did 
not  think  of  Christophe,  she  knew  not  what  she  thought.  She 
was  happy. 

The  next  day,  Christophe,  who  thought  himself  in  some 
measure  responsible  for  the  accident,  came  to  make  inquiries. 


246 


JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 


and  for  the  first  time  he  made  some  show  of  affection  for  her. 
She  was  filled  with  gratitude,  and  blessed  her  sprained  ankle. 
She  would  gladly  have  suffered  all  her  life,  if,  all  her  life,  she 
might  have  such  joy.— She  liad  to  lie  down  for  several  days 
and  never  movej  she  spent  them  in  turning  over  and  over 
her  grandfather’s  words,  and  considering  them.  Had  he  said: 

“ They  will  . . 

Or: 

“They  would  . . .?” 

But  it  was  possible  that  he  had  never  said  anything  of  this 
kind?— Yes.  He  had  said  it;  she  was  certain  of  it.  . . . What! 
Did  they  not  see  that  she  was  ugly,  and  that  Christophe  could 
not  bear  her  ? . . . But  it  was  so  good  to  hope  1 She  came  to 
believe  that  perhaps  she  had  been  wrong,  that  she  was  not  as 
ugly  as  she  thought;  she  would  sit  up  on  her  sofa  to  try  and. 
see  herself  in  the  mirror  on  the  wall  opposite,  above  the  mantel-, 
piece ; she  did  not  know  what  to  think.  After  all,  her  father  jj 
and  her  grandfather  were  better  judges  than  herself;  people; 
cannot  tell  about  themselves.  ...  Oh ! Heaven,  if  it  were  pos-^ 
sible!  ...  If  it  could  be  . . . if,  she  never  dared  think  it,^ 
if  ...  if  she  were  pretty!  . . . Perhaps,  also,  she  had  exag-f 
gerated  Christophe’s  antipathy.  No  doubt  he  was  indifferent, 
and  after  the  interest  he  had  shown  in  her  the  day  after  the 
accident  did  not  bother  about  her  any  more;  he  forgot  to  in-, 
quire ; but  Rosa  made  excuses  for  him,  he  was  so  busy ! How, 
should  he  think  of  her?  An  artist  cannot  be  judged  like  otherj 

men.  ...  i j. 

And  yet,  resigned  though  she  was,  she  could  not  help  expect-* 

ing  with  beating  heart  a word  of  sympathy  from  him  when 
he  came  near  her.  A word  only,  a look  . . . her  imagination 
did  the  rest.  In  the  beginning  love  needs  so  little  food!  It 
is  enough  to  see,  to  touch  as  you  pass ; such  a power  of  dreams 
flows  from  the  soul  in  such  moments,  that  almost  of  itself  it 
can  create  its  love:  a trifle  can  plunge  it  into  ecstasy  that 
later,  when  it  is  more  satisfied,  and  in  proportion  more  exacting, 
it  will  hardly  find  again  when  at  last  it  does  possess  the  object 
of  its  desire.— Rosa  lived  absolutely,  though  no  one  knew  it, 
in  a romance  of  her  own  fashioning,  pieced  together  by  her- 
self: Christophe  loved  her  secretly,  and  was  too  shy  to  confess 


YOUTH 


247 


his  love,  or  there  was  some  stupid  reason,  fantastic  or  romantic, 
delightful  to  the  imagination  of  the  sentimental  little  ninny. 
She  fashioned  endless  stories,  and  all  perfectly  absurd;  she 
knew  it  herself,  but  tried  not  to  know  it;  she  lied  to  herself 
voluptuously  for  days  and  days  as  she  bent  over  her  sewing. 
It  made  her  forget  to  talk:  her  flood  of  words  was  turned 
inward,  like  a river  which  suddenly  disappears  underground. 
But  then  the  river  took  its  revenge.  What  a debauch  of  speeches, 
of  unuttered  conversations  which  no  one  heard  but  herself! 
Sometimes  her  lips  would  move  as  they  do  with  people  who 
have  to  spell  out  the  syllables  to  themselves  as  they  read  so 
as  to  understand  them. 

When  her  dreams  left  her  she  was  happy  and  sad.  She  knew 
that  things  were  not  as  she  had  just  told  herself:  but  she  was 
left  with  a reflected  happiness,  and  had  greater  confidence  for 
her  life.  She  did  not  despair  of  winning  Christophe. 

She  did  not  admit  it  to  herself,  but  she  set  about  doing  it. 
With  the  sureness  of  instinct  that  great  affection  brings,  the 
awkward,  ignorant  girl  contrived  immediately  to  find  the  road 
by  which  she  might  reach  her  beloved’s  heart.  She  did  not 
turn  directly  to  him.  But  as  soon  as  she  was  better  and  could 
once  more  walk  about  the  house  she  approached  Louisa.  The 
smallest  excuse  served.  She  found  a thousand  little  services 
to  render  her.  When  she  went  out  she  never  failed  to  under- 
take various  errands : she  spared  her  going  to  the  market,  argu- 
ments with  tradespeople,  she  would  fetch  water  for  her  from 
the  pump  in  the  yard;  she  cleaned  the  windows  and  polished 
the  floors  in  spite  of  Louisa’s  protestations,  who  was  confused 
when  she  did  not  do  her  work  alone;  but  she  was  so  weary  that 
she  had  not  the  strength  to  oppose  anybody  who  came  to  help 
her.  Christophe  was  out  all  day.  Louisa  felt  that  she  was 
deserted,  and  the  companionship  of  the  affectionate,  chattering 
girl  was  pleasant  to  her.  Eosa  took  up  her  quarters  in  her 
room.  She  brought  her  sewing,,  and  talked  all  the  time.  By 
clumsy  devices  she  tried  to  bring  ^‘conversation  round  to  Chris- 
tophe. Just  to  hear  of  him,  even  to  hear  his  name,  made 
her  happy;  her  hands  would  tremble;  she  would  sit  with  down- 
cast eyes.  Louisa  was  delighted  to  talk  of  her  beloved  Chris- 
tophe, and  would  tell  little  tales  of  his  childhood,  trivial  and 


248 


JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 


just  a little  ridiculous ; but  there  was  no  fear  of  Rosa  thinking 
them  so:  she  took  a great  joy,  and  there  was  a dear  emotion 
for  her  in  imagining  Christophe  as  a child,  and  doing  all  the 
tricks  and  having  all  the  darling  ways  of  children:  in  her  the 
motherly  tenderness  which  lies  in  the  hearts  of  all  women  was 
mingled  deliciously  with  that  other  tenderness : she  would  laugh 
heartily  and  tears  would  come  to  her  eyes.  Louisa  was  touched 
by  the  interest  that  Rosa  took  in  her.  She  guessed  dimly  what 
was  in  the  girl’s  heart,  but  she  never  let  it  appear  that  she  did 
so;  but  she  was  glad  of  it;  for  of  all  in  the  house  she  only 
knew  the  worth  of  the  girl’s  heart.  Sometimes  she  would  stop 
talking  to  look  at  her.  Rosa,  surprised  by  her  silence,  would 
raise  her  eyes  from  her  work.  Louisa  would  smile  at  her.  Rosa 
would  throw  herself  into  her  arms,  suddenly,  passionately,  and 
would  hide  her  face  in  Louisa’s  bosom.  Then  they  would  go  • 
on  working  and  talking,  as  if  nothing  had  happened.  ( 

In  the  evening  when  Christophe  came  home,  Louisa,  grateful  ; 
for  Rosa’s  attentions,  and  in  pursuance  of  the  little  plan  she  ■ 
had  made,  always  praised  the  girl  to  the  skies.  Christophe  ^ 
was  touched  by  Rosa’s  kindness.  He  saw  how  much  good  ^ 
she  was  doing  his  mother,  in  whose  face  there  was  more  serenity : ; 
and  he  would  thank  her  effusively.  Rosa  would  murmur,  and  • 
escapG  to  concoal  hor  embarrassniGiit  t so  she  appeared  a thou- 
sand  times  more  intelligent  and  sympathetic  to  Christophe  than  ,, 
if  she  had  spoken.  He  looked  at  her  less  with  a prejudiced  ■ 
eye,  and  did  not  conceal  his  surprise  at  finding  unsuspected  | 
qualities  in  her.  Rosa  saw  that ; she  marked  the  progress  that  < 
she  made  in  his  s}^mpathy  and  thought  that  his  sympathy  would  i 
lead  to  love.  She  gave  herself  up  more  than  ever  to  her  dreams,  v 
She  came  near  to  believing  with  the  beautiful  presumption  of 
youth  that  what  you  desire  with  all  your  being  is  always 
accomplished  in  the  end.  Besides,  how  was  her  desire  unreason- 
able ? Should  not  Christophe  have  been  more  sensible  than  , ; 
any  other  of  her  goodness  and  her  affectionate  need  of  self- 
devotion? 

But  Christophe  gave  no  thought  to  her.  He  esteemed  her; 
but  she  filled  no  room  in  his  thoughts.  He  was  busied  with  . 
far  other  things  at  the  moment.  Christophe  was  no  longer 
Christophe.  He  did  not  know  himself.  He  was  in  a mighty  ^ 


YOUTH  249 

travail  that  was  like  to  sweep  everything  away,  a complete 
upheaval. 

Christoph  e was  conscious  of  extreme  weariness  and  great  un- 
easiness. He  was  for  no  reason  worn  out;  his  head  was  heavy, 
his  eyes,  his  ears,  all  his  senses  were  dumb  and  throbbing.  He 
could  not  give  his  attention  to  anything.  His  mind  leaped  from 
one  subject  to  another,  and  was  in  a fever  that  sucked  him  dry. 
The  perpetual  fluttering  of  images  in  his  mind  made  him  giddy. 
At  first  he  attributed  it  to  fatigue  and  the  enervation  of  the 
first  days  of  spring.  But  spring  passed  and  his  sickness  only 
grew  worse. 

It  was  what  the  poets  who  only  touch  lightly  on  things  call 
the  unease  of  adolescence,  the  trouble  of  the  cherubim,  the 
waking  of  the  desire  of  love  in  the  young  body  and  soul.  As 
if  the  fearful  crisis  of  all  a man’s  being,  breaking  up,  dying, 
and  coming  to  full  rebirth,  as  if  the  cataclysm  in  which  every- 
thing, faith,  thought,  action,  all  life,  seems  like  to  be  blotted 
out,  and  then  to  be  new-forged  in  the  convulsions  of  sorrow 
and  joy,  can  be  reduced  to  terms  of  a child’s  folly! 

All  his  body  and  soul  were  in  a ferment.  He  watched  them, 
having  no  strength  to  struggle,  with  a mixture  of  curiosity  and 
disgust.  He  did  not  understand  what  was  happening  in  himself. 
His  whole  being  was  disintegrated.  He  spent  days  together  in 
absolute  torpor.  Work  was  torture  to  him.  At  night  he  slept 
heavily  and  in  snatches,  dreaming  monstrously,  with  gusts  of 
desire;  the  soul  of  a beast  was  racing  madly  in  him.  Burning, 
bathed  in  sweat,  he  watched  himself  in  horror;  he  tried  to 
break  free  of  the  crazy  and  unclean  thoughts  that  possessed 
him,  and  he  wondered  if  he  were  going  mad. 

The  day  gave  him  no  shelter  from  his  brutish  thoughts.  In 
the  depths  of  his  soul  he  felt  that  he  was  slipping  down  and 
down;  there  was  no  stay  to  clutch  at;  no  barrier  to  keep  back 
chaos.  All  his  defenses,  all  his  citadels,  with  the  quadruple 
rampart  that  hemmed  him  in  so  proudly — ^his  God,  his  art,  his 
pride,  his  moral  faith,  all  was  crumbling  away,  falling  piece 
by  piece  from  him.  He  saw  himself  naked,  bound,  lying  unable 
to  move,  like  a corpse  on  which  vermin  swarm.  He  had  spasms 
of  revolt:  where  was  his  will,  of  which  he  was  so  proud?  He 


350 


JEAN-CHKISTOPHE 


called  to  it  in  vain:  it  was  like  the  efforts  that  one  makes  in 
sleep,  knowing  that  one  is  dreaming,  and  trying  to  awake.  Then 
one  succeeds  only  in  falling  from  one  dream  to  another  like 
a lump  of  load,  and  in  being  more  and  more  choked  by  the 
suffocation  of  the  soul  in  bondage.  At  last  he  found  that  it 
was  less  painful  not  to  struggle.  He  decided  not  to  do  so,  with 
fatalistic  apathy  and  despair. 

The  even  tenor  of  his  life  seemed  to  be  broken  up.  Now  he 
slipped  down  a subterranean  crevasse  and  was  like  to  disappear ; 
now  he  bounded  up  again  with  a violent  jerk.  The  chain  of 
his  days  was  snapped.  In  the  midst  of  the  even  plain  of  the 
hours  great  gaping  holes  would  open  to  engulf  his  soul.  Chris- 
tophe  looked  on  at  the  spectacle  as  though  it  did  not  concern 
him.  Everything,  everybody, — and  himself — were  strange  to 
him.  He  went  about  his  business,  did  his  work,  automatically: 
it  seemed  to  him  that  the  machinery  of  his  life  might  stop  at  ■ 
any  moment:  the  wheels  were  out  of  gear.  At  dinner  with  his  ^ 
mother  and  the  others,  in  the  orchestra  with  the  musicians  ’ 
and  the  audience,  suddenly  there  would  be  a void  and  emptiness  , 
in  his  brain : he  would  look  stupidly  at  the  grinning  faces  about  t 
him : and  he  could  not  understand.  He  would  ask  himself : ■ 

“ What  is  there  between  these  creatures  and  . . . ? ” i 

He  dared  not  even  say: 

. . and  me.”  i 

For  he  knew  not  whether  he  existed.  He  would  speak  and( 
his  voice  would  seem  to  issue  from  another  body.  He  would) 
move,  and  he  saw  his  movements  from  afar,  from  above — from' 
the  top  of  a tower.  He  would  pass  his  hand  over  his  face,  and: 
his  eyes  would  wander.  He  was  often  near  doing  crazy  things.  ^ 
It  was  especially  when  he  was  most  in  public  that  he  had 
to  keep  guard  on  himself.  For  example,  on  the  evenings  when 
he  went  to  the  Palace  or  was  playing  in  public.  Then  he  would 
suddenly  be  seized  by  a terrific  desire  to  make  a face,  or  say 
something  outrageous,  to  pull  the  Grand  Duke’s  nose,  or  to  take 
a running  kick  at  one  of  the  ladies.  One  whole  evening  while 
he  was  conducting  the  orchestra,  he  struggled  against  an  in- 
sensate desire  to  undress  himself  in  public : and  he  was  haunted 
by  the  idea  from  the  moment  when  he  tried  to  check  it:  he 
had  to  exert  all  his  strength  not  to  give  way  to  it.  When  he 


■ ' 


YOUTH 


251 


issued  from  the  brute  struggle  he  was  dripping  with  sweat 
and  his  mind  was  blank.  He  was  really  mad.  It  was  enough 
for  him  to  think  that  he  must  not  do  a thing  for  it  to  fasten 
on  him  with  the  maddening  tenacity  of  a fixed  idea. 

So  his  life  was  spent  in  a series  of  unbridled  outbreaks  and 
of  endless  falls  into  emptiness.  A furious  wind  in  the  desert. 
Whence  came  this  wind?  From  what  abyss  came  these  desires 
that  wrenched  his  body  and  mind  ? He  was  like  a bow  stretched 
to  breaking  point  by  a strong  hand, — to  what  end  unknown  ? — 
which  then  springs  back  like  a piece  of  dead  wood.  Of  what 
force  was  he  the  prey  ? He  dared  not  probe  for  it.  He  felt  that 
he  was  beaten,  humiliated,  and  he  would  not  face  his  defeat.  He 
was  weary  and  broken  in  spirit.  He  understood  now  the  people 
whom  formerly  he  had  despised:  those  who  will  not  seek  awk- 
ward truth.  In  the  empty  hours,  when  he  remembered  that 
time  was  passing,  his  work  neglected,  the  future  lost,  he  was 
frozen  with  terror.  But  there  was  no  reaction : and  his  cowardice 
found  excuses  in  desperate  affirmation  of  the  void  in  which  he 
lived:  he  took  a bitter  delight  in  abandoning  himself  to  it  like 
a wreck  on  the  waters.  What  was  the  good  of  fighting  ? There 
was  nothing  beautiful,  nor  good ; neither  God,  nor  life,  nor  being 
of  any  sort.  In  the  street  as  he  walked,  suddenly  the  earth 
would  sink  away  from  him : there  was  neither  ground,  nor  air, 
nor  light,  nor  himself:  there  was  nothing.  He  would  fall,  his 
head  would  drag  him  down,  face  forwards : he  could  hardly  hold 
himself  up;  he  was  on  the  point  of  collapse.  He  thought  he 
was  going  to  die,  suddenly,  struck  down.  He  thought  he  was 
dead.  . . . 

Christophe  was  growing  a new  skin.  Christophe  was  growing 
a new  soul.  And  seeing  the  worn  out  and  rotten  soul  of  his 
childhood  falling  away  he  never  dreamed  that  he  was  taking 
on  a new  one,  young  and  stronger.  As  through  life  we  change 
our  bodies,  so  also  do  we  change  our  souls : and  the  metamor- 
phosis does  not  always  take  place  slowly  over  many  days;  there 
are  times  of  crisis  when  the  whole  is  suddenly  renewed.  The 
adult  changes  his  soul.  The  old  soul  that  is  cast  off  dies.  In 
those  hours  of  anguish  we  think  that  all  is  at  an  end.  And 
the  whole  thing  begins  again.  A life  dies.  Another  life  has 
already  come  into  being. 


252 


JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 


One  night  he  was  alone  in  his  room,  with  his  elbow  on  his 
desk  under  the  light  of  a candle.  His  back  was  turned  to  the 
window.  He  was  not  working.  He  had  not  been  able  to  work 
for  weeks.  Everything  was  twisting  and  turning  in  his  head. 
He  had  brought  everything  under  scrutiny  at  once:  religion, 
morals,  art,  the  whole  of  life.  And  in  the  general  dissolution 
of  his  thoughts  was  no  method,  no  order : he  had  plunged  into 
the  reading  of  books  taken  haphazard  from  his  grandfather’s 
heterogeneous  library  or  from  Vogel’s  collection  of  books:  books 
of  theology,  science,  philosophy,  an  odd  lot,  of  which  he  under- 
stood nothing,  having  everything  to  learn:  he  could  not  finish 
any  of  them,  and  in  the  middle  of  them  went  off  on  divagations, 
endless  whimsies,  which  left  him  weary,  empty,  and  in  mortal 
sorrow. 

So,  that  evening,  he  was  sunk  in  an  exhausted  torpor.  The  ' 
whole  house  was  asleep.  His  window  was  open.  Not  a breath  . 
came  up  from  the  yard.  Thick  clouds  filled  the  sky.  Chris-  ; 
tophe  mechanically  watched  the  candle  burn  away  at  the  bottom  • 
of  the  candlestick.  He  could  not  go  to  bed.  He  had  no  thought 
of  anything.  He  felt  the  void  growing,  growing  from  moment  ; 
to  moment.  He  tried  not  to  see  the  abyss  that  drew  him  to  its  ; 
brink:  and  in  spite  of  himself  he  leaned  over  and  his  eyes  gazed 
into  the  depths  of  the  night.  In  the  void,  chaos  was  stirring, 
and  faint  sounds  came  from  the  darkness.  Agony  filled  him:  . 
a shiver  ran  down  his  spine:  his  skin  tingled:  he  clutched  the  ^ 
table  so  as  not  to  fall.  Convulsively  he  awaited  nameless  things,  ; 

a miracle,  a God.  ...  . ' 

Suddenly,  like  an  opened  sluice,  in  the  yard  behind  him,  a | 
deluge  of  water,  a heavy  rain,  large  drops,  down  pouring,  fell.  > 
The  still  air  quivered.  The  dry,  hard  soil  rang  out  like  a bell. 
And  the  vast  scent  of  the  earth,  burning,  warm  as  that  of  an 
animal,  the  smell  of  the  flowers,  fruit,  and  amorous  flesh  rose 
in  a spasm  of  fury  and  pleasure.  Christophe,  under  illusion, 
at  fullest  stretch,  shook.  He  trembled.  . . . The  veil  was  rent. 
He  was  blinded.  By  a flash  of  lightning,  he  saw,  in  the  depths 
of  the  night,  he  saw — he  was  God.  God  was  in  himself;  He 
burst  tlie  ceiling  of  the  room,  the  walls  of  the  house;  He  cracked 
the  very  bounds  of  existence.  He  filled  the  sky,  the  universe, 
space.  The  world  coursed  through  Him,  like  a cataract.  In 


YOUTH 


253 


the  horror  and  ecstasy  of  that  cataclysm,  Christophe  fell  too, 
swept  along  by  the  whirlwind  which  brushed  away  and  crushed 
like  straws  the  laws  of  nature.  He  was  breathless:  he  was 
drunk  with  the  swift  hurtling , down  into  God  . . . God-abyss  I 
God-gulf ! Fire  of  Being ! Hurricane  of  life ! Madness  of  living, 
— aimless,  uncontrolled,  beyond  reason, — for  the  fury  of  living ! 

When  the  crisis  was  over,  he  fell  into  a deep  sleep  and  slept 
as  he  had  not  done  for  long  enough.  Next  day  when  he  awoke 
his  head  swam : he  was  as  broken  as  though  he  had  been  drunk. 
But  in  his  inmost  heart  he  had  still  a beam  of  that  somber  and 
great  light  that  had  struck  him  down  the  night  before.  He 
tried  to  relight  it.  In  vain.  The  more  he  pursued  it,  the  more 
it  eluded  him.  From  that  time  on,  all  his  energy  was  directed 
towards  recalling  the  vision  of  a moment.  The  endeavor  was 
futile.  Ecstasy  does  not  answer  the  bidding  of  the  will. 

But  that  mystic  exaltation  was  not  the  only  experience 
that  he  had  of  it:  it  recurred  several  times,  but  never  wdth 
the  intensity  of  the  first.  It  came  always  at  moments  when 
Christophe  was  least  expecting  it,  for  a second  only,  a time  so 
short,  so  sudden, — no  longer  than  a wink  of  an  eye  or  a raising 
of  a hand — that  the  vision  was  gone  before  he  could  discover 
that  it  was : and  then  he  would  wonder  whether  he  had  not 
dreamed  it.  After  that  fiery  bolt  that  had  set  the  night  afiame, 
it  was  a gleaming  dust,  shedding  fieeting  sparks,  which  the 
eye  could  hardly  see  as  they  sped  by.  But  they  reappeared 
more  and  more  often:  and  in  the  end  they  surrounded  Chris- 
tophe with  a halo  of  perpetual  misty  dreams,  in  which  his 
spirit  melted.  Everything  that  distracted  him  in  his  state  of 
semi-hallucination  was  an  irritation  to  him.  It  was  impossible 
to  work;  he  gave  up  thinking  about  it.  Society  was  odious 
to  him ; and  more  than  any,  that  of  his  intimates,  even  that 
of  his  mother,  because  they  arrogated  to  themselves  more  rights 
over  his  soul. 

He  left  the  house:  he  took  to  spending  his  days  abroad,  and 
never  returned  until  nightfall.  He  sought  the  solitude  of  the 
fields,  and  delivered  himself  up  to  it,  drank  his  fill  of  it,  like 
a maniac  who  wishes  not  to  be  disturbed  by  anything  in  the 
obsession  of  his  fixed  ideas. — But  in  the  great  sweet  air,  in 


254  JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 

contact  with  the  earth,  his  obsession  relaxed,  his  ideas  ceased 
to  appear  like  specters.  His  exaltation  was  no  less:  rather  it 
was  heightened,  but  it  was  no  longer  a dangerous  delirium  of 
the  mind  but  a healthy  intoxication  of  his  whole  being:  body 
and  soul  crazy  in  their  strength. 

He  rediscovered  the  world,  as  though  he  had  never  seen  it. 

It  was  a new  childhood.  It  was  as  though  a magic  word  had 
been  uttered.  An  “ Open  Sesame!  ” — Nature  flamed  with  glad- 
ness. The  sun  boiled.  The  liquid  sky  ran  like  a clear  river. 
The  earth  steamed  and  cried  aloud  in  delight.  The  plants, 
the  trees,  the  insects,  all  the  innumerable  creatures  were  like 
dazzling  tongues  of  flame  in  the  fire  of  life  writhing  upwards. 
Everything  sang  aloud  in  joy. 

And  that  joy  was  his  own.  That  strength  was  his  own.  He 
was  no  longer  cut  off  from  the  rest  of  the  world.  Till  then, 
even  in  the  happy  days  of  childhood,  when  he  saw  nature  with  , 
ardent  and  delightful  curiosity,  all  creatures  had  seemed  to  ; 
him  to  be  little  worlds  shut  up,  terrifying  and  grotesque,  un-  i 
related  to  himself,  and  incomprehensible.  He  was  not  even  ^ 
sure  that  they  had  feeling  and  life.  They  were  strange  machines.  ^ 
And  sometimes  Christophe  had  even,  with  the  unconscious? 
cruelty  of  a child,,  dismembered  wretched  insects  without  dream-  ; 
ing  that  they  might  suffer— for  the  pleasure  of  watching  their  _ 
queer  contortions.  His  uncle  Gottfried,  usually  so  calm,  ha  . 
one  day  indignantly  to  snatch  from  his  hands  an  unhappy  ^ 
fly  that  he  was  torturing.  The  boy  had  tried  to  laugh  at  first  :| 
then  he  had  burst  into  tears,  moved  by  his  uncle’s  emotion :» 
he  began  to  understand  that  his  victim  did  really  exist,  as  well| 
as  himself,  and  that  he  had  committed  a crime.  But  if  there- v 
after  nothing  would  have  induced  him  to  do  harm  to  the  beasts, 
he  never  felt  any  sympathy  for  them:  he  used  to  pass  them 
by  without  ever  trying  to  feel  what  it  was  that  worked  their 
machinery:  rather  he  was  afraid  to  think  of  it:  it  was  some- 
thing like  a bad  dream.— And  now  everything  was  made  plain. 
These  humble,  obscure  creatures  became  in  their  turn  centers 

of  light.  , 

Lying  on  his  belly  in  the  grass  where  creatures  swarmed, 

in  the  shade  of  the  trees  that  buzzed  with  insects,  Christophe 
would  watch  the  fevered  movements  of  the  ants,  the  long-legged 


YOUTH 


255 


spiders,  that  seemed  to  dance  as  they  walked,  the  bounding 
grasshoppers,  that  leap  aside,  the  heavy,  bustling  beetles,  and 
the  naked  worms,  pink  and  glabrous,  mottled  with  white,  or 
with  his  hands  under  his  head  and  his  eyes  closed  he  would 
listen  to  the  invisible  orchestra,  the  roundelay  of  the  frenzied 
insects  circling  in  a sunbeam  about  the  scented  pines,  the 
trumpeting  of  the  mosquitoes,  the  organ  notes  of  the  wasps,  the 
brass  of  the  wild  bees  humming  like  bells  in  the  tops  of 
the  trees,  and  the  godlike  whispering  of  the  swaying  trees,  the 
sweet  moaning  of  the  wind  in  the  branches,  the  soft  whispering 
of  the  waving  grass,  like  a breath  of  wind  rippling  the  limpid 
surface  of  a lake,  like  the  rustling  of  a light  dress  and  lovers^ 

-footsteps  coming  near,  and  passing,  then  lost  upon  the  air. 

He  heard  all  these  sounds  and  cries  within  himself.  Through 
all  these  creatures  from  the  smallest  to  the  greatest  flowed  the 
same  river  of  life : and  in  it  he  too  swam.  So,  he  was  one  of 
them,  he  was  of  their  blood,  and,  brotherly,  he  heard  the  echo 
of  their  sorrows  and  their  joys:  their  strength  was  merged  in 
his  like  a river  fed  with  thousands  of  streams.  He  sank  into 
them.  His  lungs  were  like  to  burst  with  the  wind,  too  freely 
blowing,  too  strong,  that  burst  the  windows  and  forced  its  way 
into  the  closed  house  of  his  suffocating  heart.  The  change 
was  too  abrupt:  after  finding  everywhere  a void,  when  he  had 
been  buried  only  in  his  own  existence,  and  had  felt  it  slip- 
ping from  him  and  dissolving  like  rain,  now  everywhere  he 
found  infinite  and  unmeasured  Being,  now  that  he  longed  to 
forget  himself,  to  find  rebirth  in  the  universe.  He  seemed  to 
have  issued  from  the  grave.  He  swam  voluptuously  in  life 
flowing  free  and  full:  and  borne  on  by  its  current  he  thought 
that  he  was  free.  He  did  not  know  that  he  was  less  free  than 
ever,  that  no  creature  is  ever  free,  that  even  the  law  that  gov- 
erns the  universe  is  not  free,  that  only  death — perhaps — can 
bring  deliverance. 

I But  the  chrysalis  issuing  from  its  stifling  sheath,  joyously 
stretched  its  limbs  in  its  new  shape,  and  had  no  time  as  yet 
to  mark  the  bounds  of  its  new  prison. 

There  began  a new  cycle  of  days.  Days  of  gold  and  fever, 
mysterious,  enchanted,  like  those  of  his  childhood,  when  one 


256 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


by  one  he  discovered  things  for  the  first  time.  From  dawn 
to  set  of  sun  he  lived  in  one  long  mirage.  He  deserted  all  his 
business.  The  conscientious  boy,  who  for  years  had  never 
missed  a lesson,  or  an  orchestra  rehearsal,  even  when  he  was 
ill,  was  forever  finding  paltry  excuses  for  neglecting  his  work. 

He  was  not  afraid  to  lie.  He  had  no  remorse  about  it.  The 
stoic  principles  of  life,  to  which  he  had  hitherto  delighted  to 
bend  his  will,  morality,  duty,  now  seemed  to  him  to  have  no 
truth,  nor  reason.  Their  jealous  despotism  was  smashed  against 
Nature.  Human  nature,  healthy,  strong,  free,  that  alone  was 
virtue:  to  hell  with  all  the  rest!  It  provoked  pitying  laughter 
to  see  the  little  peddling  rules  of  prudence  and  policy  which 
the  world  adorns  with  the  name  of  morality,  while  it  pretends 
to  inclose  all  life  within  them.  A preposterous  mole-hill,  an 
ant-like  people ! Life  sees  to  it  that  they  are  brought  to  reason. 
Life  does  but  pass,  and  all  is  swept  away.  ... 

Bursting  with  energy  Christophe  had  moments  when  he  was  ' 
consumed  with  a desire  to  destroy,  to  burn,  to  smash,  to  glut 
with  actions  blind  and  uncontrolled  the  force  which  choked  t 
him.  These  outbursts  usually  ended  in  a sharp  reaction:  he  \ 
would  weep,  and  fiing  himself  down  on  the  ground,  and  kiss 
the  earth,  and  try  to  dig  into  it  with  his  teeth  and  hands,  to 
feed  himself  with  it,  to  merge  into  it:  he  trembled  then  with 
fever  and  desire.  t 

One  evening  he  was  walking  in  the  outskirts  of  a wood.  ( 
His  eyes  were  swimming  with  the  light,  his  head  was  whirling : | 

he  was  in  that  state  of  exaltation  when  all  creatures  and  things  ^ 
were  transfigured.  To  that  was  added  the  magic  of  the  1 
soft  warm  light  of  evening.  Bays  of  purple  and  gold  hovered  ‘ 
in  the  trees.  From  the  meadows  seemed  to  come  a phos- 
phorescent glimmer.  In  a field  near  by  a girl  was  making  hay. 

In  her  blouse  and  short  skirt,  with  her  arms  and  neck  bare,  ' 
she  was  raking  the  hay  and  heaping  it  up.  She  had  a short 
nose,  wide  cheeks,  a round  face,  a handkerchief  thrown  over* 
her  hair.  The  setting  sun  touched  with  red  her  sunburned 
skin,  which,  like  a piece  of  pottery,  seemed  to  absorb  the  last 
beams  of  the  da3^ 

She  fascinated  Christophe.  Leaning  against  a beech-tree 
he  watched  her  come  towards  the  verge  of  the  woods,  eagerly,  ' 


YOUTH 


257 


passionately.  Everything  else  bad  disappeared.  She  took  no 
notice  of  him.  For  a moment  she  looked  at  him  cautiously: 
he  saw  her  eyes  blue  and  hard  in  her  brown  face.  She  passed 
so  near  to  him  that,  when  she  leaned  down  to  gather  up  the 
hay,  through  her  open  blouse  he  saw  a soft  down  on  her  shoul- 
ders and  back.  Suddenly  the  vague  desire  which  was  in  him 
leaped  forth.  He  hurled  himself  at  her  from  behind,  seized  her 
neck  and  waist,  threw  back  her  head  and  fastened  his  lips  upon 
hers.  He  kissed  her  dry,  cracked  lips  until  he  came  against 
her  teeth  that  bit  him  angrily.  His  hands  ran  over  her  rough 
arms,  over  her  blouse  wet  with  her  sweat.  She  struggled. 
He  held  her  tighter,  he  wished  to  strangle  her.  She  broke 
loose,  cried  out,  spat,  wiped  her  lips  with  her  hand,  and  hurled 
insults  at  him.  He  let  her  go  and  fled  across  the  flelds.  She 
threw  stones  at  him  and  went  on  discharging  after  him  a litany 
of  filthy  epithets.  He  blushed,  less  for  anything  that  she  might 
say  or  think,  but  for  what  he  was  thinking  himself.  The  sudden 
unconscious  act  filled  him  with  terror.  What  had  he  done? 
What  should  he  do?  What  he  was  able  to  understand  of  it 
all  only  filled  him  with  disgust.  And  he  was  tempted  by  his 
disgust.  He  fought  against  himself  and  knew  not  on  which 
side  was  the  real  Christophe.  A blind  force  beset  him : in  vain 
did  he  fly  from  it:  it  was  only  to  fly  from  himself.  WTiat 
would  she  do  about  him?  WTiat  should  he  do  to-morrow  . . . 
in  an  hour  . . . the  time  it  took  to  cross  the  plowed  field  to 
reach  the  road?  . . . Would  he  ever  reach  it?  Should  he  not 
stop,  and  go  back,  and  run  back  to  the  girl?  And  then?  . . . 
He  remembered  that  delirious  moment  when  he  had  held  her 
by  the  throat.  Everything  was  possible.  All  things  were  worth 
while.  A crime  even.  ...  Yes,  even  a crime.  . . . The  tur- 
moil in  his  heart  made  him  breathless.  When  he  reached  the 
road  he  stopped  to  breathe.  Over  there  the  girl  wa&  talking  to 
another  girl  who  had  been  attracted  by  her  cries:  and  with 
arms  akimbo,  they  were  looking  at  each  other  and  shouting  with 
laughter. 


258 


JEAN-CHKISTOPHE 


II 

SABINE 

He  went  home.  He  shut  himself  up  in  his  room  and  never 
stirred  for  several  days.  He  only  went  out  even  into  the  town 
when  he  was  compelled.  He  was  fearful  of  ever  going  out 
beyond  the  gates  and  venturing  forth  into  the  fields : he  was 
afraid  of  once  more  falling  in  with  the  soft,  maddening  breath 
that  had  blown  upon  him  like  a rushing  wind  during  a calm 
in  a storm.  He  thought  that  the  walls  of  the  town  might 
preserve  him  from  it.  He  never  dreamed  that  for  the  enemy 
to  slip  within  there  needed  be  only  the  smallest  crack 
in  the  closed  shutters,  no  more  than  is  needed  for  a peep  '! 
out. 

In  a wing  of  the  house,  on  the  other  side  of  the  yard,  there  .< 
lodged  on  the  ground  fioor  a young  woman  of  twenty,  some  * 
months  a widow,  with  a little  girl.  Frau  Sabine  Froehlich  ^ 
was  also  a tenant  of  old  Euler’s.  She  occupied  the  shop  which  i 
opened  on  to  the  street,  and  she  had  as  well  two  rooms  looking  • 
on  to  the  yard,  together  with  a little  patch  of  garden,  marked 
off  from  the  Eulers’  by  a wire  fence  up  which  ivy  climbed. 
They  did  not  often  see  her:  the  child  used  to  play  down  in  ; 
the  garden  from  morning  to  night  making  mud  pies:  and  the  j 
garden  was  left  to  itself,  to  the  great  distress  of  old  Justus,  j 
who  loved  tidy  paths  and  neatness  in  the  beds.  He  had  tried  ? 
to  bring  the  matter  to  the  attention  of  his  tenant : but  that  < 
was  probably  why  she  did  not  appear:  and  the  garden  was  not  < 
improved  by  it. 

Frau  Froehlich  kept  a little  draper’s  shop  which  might  have 
had  customers  enough,  thanks  to  its  position  in  a street  of 
shops  in  the  center  of  the  town:  but  she  did  not  bother  about 
it  any  more  than  about  her  garden.  Instead  of  doing  her 
housework  herself,  as,  according  to  Frau  Vogel,  every  self- 
respecting  woman  ought  to  do — especially  when  she  is  in  cir- 
cumstances which  do  not  permit  much  less  excuse  idleness— 
she  had  hired  a little  servant,  a girl  of  fifteen,  who  came  in 
for  a few  hours  in  the  morning  to  clean  the  rooms  and  look 


YOUTH  259 

after  the  shop,  while  the  young  woman  lay  in  bed  or  dawdled 
over  her  toilet. 

Christophe  used  to  see  her  sometimes,  through  his  windows, 
walking  about  her  room,  with  bare  feet,  in  her  long  nightgown, 
or  sitting  for  hours  together  before  her  mirror:  for  she  was 
so  careless  that  she  used  to  forget  to  draw  her  curtains:  and 
when  she  saw  him,  she  was  so  lazy  that  she  could  not  take 
the  trouble  to  go  and  lower  them.  Christophe,  more  modest 
than  she,  would  leave  the  window  so  as  not  to  incommode  her : 
but  the  temptation  was  great.  He  would  blush  a little  and 
steal  a glance  at  her  bare  arms,  which  were  rather  thin,  as 
she  drew  them  languidly  around  her  flowing  hair,  and  with  her 
hands  clasped  behind  her  head,  lost  herself  in  a dream,  until 
they  were  numbed,  and  then  she  would  let  them  fall.  Christophe 
would  pretend  that  he  only  saw  these  pleasant  sights  inadver- 
tently as  he  happened  to  pass  the  window,  and  that  they  did  not 
disturb  him  in  his  musical  thoughts : but  he  liked  it,  and  in  the 
end  he  wasted  as  much  time  in  watching  Frau  Sabine,  as  she 
did  over  her  toilet.  Not  that  she  was  a coquette:  she  was 
rather  careless,  generally,  and  did  not  take  anything  like  the 
meticulous  care  with  her  appearance  that  Amalia  or  Eosa  did. 
If  she  dawdled  in  front  of  her  dressing  table  it  was  from  pure 
laziness:  every  time  she  put  in  a pin  she  had  to  rest  from  the 
effort  of  it,  while  she  made  little  piteous  faces  at  herself  in 
the  mirrors.  She  was  never  quite  properly  dressed  at  the  end 
of  the  day. 

Often  her  servant  used  to  go  before  Sabine  was  ready:  and 
a customer  would  ring  the  shop-bell.  She  would  let  him  ring 
and  call  once  or  twice  before  she  could  make  up  her  mind 
to  get  up  from  her  chair.  She  would  go  down,  smiling,  and 
never  hurrying, — never  hurrying  would  look  for  the  article 
required, — and  if  she  could  not  And  it  after  looking  for  some 
time,  or  even  (as  happened  sometimes)  if  she  had  to  take 
too  much  trouble  to  reach  it,  as  for  instance,  taking  the  ladder 
from  one  end  of  the  shop  to  the  other, — she  would  say  calmly 
that  she  did  not  have  it  in  stock:  and  as  she  never  bothered 
to  put  her  stock  in  order,  or  to  order  more  of  the  articles  of 
which  she  had  run  out,  her  customers  used  to  lose  patience 
and  go  elsewhere.  But  she  never  minded.  How  could  you  be 


260 


JEAJ^-CHEISTOPHE 


angry  with  such  a pleasant  creature  who  spoke  so  sweetly,  and 
was  never  excited  about  anything!  She  did  not  mind  what 
anybody  said  to  her:  and  she  made  this  so  plain  that  those 
who  began  to  complain  never  had  the  courage  to  go  on:  they 
used  to  go,  answering  her  charming  smile  with  a smile:  but 
they  never  came  back.  She  never  bothered  about  it.  She  went 
on  smiling. 

She  was  like  a little  Florentine  figure.  Her  well  marked 
eyebrows  were  arched:  her  gray  eyes  were  half  open  behind 
the  curtain  of  her  lashes.  The  lower  eyelid  was  a little  swollen, 
with  a little  crease  below  it.  Her  little,  finely  drawn  nose  turned 
up  slightly  at  the  end.  Another  little  curve  lay  between  it 
and  her  upper  lip,  which  curled  up  above  her  half-open  mouth, 
pouting  in  a weary  smile.  Her  lower  lip  was  a little  thick: 
the  lower  part  of  her  face  was  rounded,  and  had  the  serious 

expression  of  the  little  virgins  of  Filippo  Lippi.  Her  com- 

plexion was  a little  muddy,  her  hair  was  light  brown,  always  ; 
untidy,  and  done  up  in  a slovenly  chignon.  She  was  slight  of 
figure,  small-boned.  And  her  movements  were  lazy.  Dressed  ^ 
carelessly — a gaping  bodice,  buttons  missing,  ugly,  worn  shoes,  \ 
always  looking  a little  slovenly — she  charmed  by  her  grace  and 
youth,  her  gentleness,  her  instinctively  coaxing  ways.  When  • 
she  appeared  to  take  the  air  at  the  door  of  her  shop,  the  young  j 
men  who  passed  used  to  look  at  her  with  pleasure:  and  al-  ! 

though  she  did  not  bother  about  them,  she  noticed  it  none  | 

the  less.  Always  then  she  wore  that  grateful  and  glad  ex-  | 

pression  which  is  in  the  eyes  of  all  women  when  they  know  • 

that  they  have  been  seen  with  sympathetic  eyes.  It  seemed  to  ] 
say : 

Thank  you ! . . . Again ! Look  at  me  again ! But  though 
it  gave  her  pleasure  to  please,  her  indifference  would  never 
let  her  make  the  smallest  effort  to  please.  ^ 

She  was  an  object  of  scandal  to  the  Euler-Vogels.  Every- 
thing about  her  offended  them : her  indolence,  the  untidiness 
of  her  house,  the  carelessness  of  her  dress,  her  polite  indiffer-  | 
ence  to  their  remarks,  her  perpetual  smile,  the  impertinent 
serenity  with  which  she  had  accepted  her  husband’s  death,  her 
child’s  illnesses,  her  straitened  circumstances,  the  great  and 
small  annoyances  of  her  daily  life,  while  nothing  could  change 


YOUTH 


261 


one  jot  of  her  favorite  habits,  or  her  eternal  longing, — every- 
thing about  her  offended  them:  and  the  worst  of  all  was  that, 
as  she  was,  she  did  give  pleasure.  Frau  Vogel  could  not  forgive 
her  that.  It  was  almost  as  though  Sabine  did  it  on  purpose, 
on  purpose,  ironically,  to  set  at  naught  by  her  conduct  the  great 
traditions,  the  true  principles,  the  savorless  duty,  the  pleasure- 
less labor,  the  restlessness,  the  noise,  the  quarrels,  the  mooning 
ways,  the  healthy  pessimism  which  was  the  motive  power  of 
the  Euler  family,  as  it  is  that  of  all  respectable  persons,  and 
made  their  life  a foretaste  of  purgatory.  That  a woman  who 
did  nothing  but  dawdle  about  all  the  blessed  day  should  take 
upon  herself  to  defy  them  with  her  calm  insolence,  while  they 
bore  their  suffering  in  silence  like  galley-slaves, — and  that 
people  should  approve  of  her  into  the  bargain — that  was  beyond 
the  limit,  that  was  enough  to  turn  you  against  respectability! 
. . . Fortunately,  thank  God,  there  were  still  a few  sensible 
people  left  in  the  world.  Frau  Vogel  consoled  herself  with 
them.  They  exchanged  remarks  about  the  little  widow,  and 
spied  on  her  through  her  shutters.  Such  gossip  was  the  joy 
of  the  family  when  they  met  at  supper.  Christophe  would 
listen  absently.  He  was  so  used  to  hearing  the  Vogels  set  them- 
selves up  as  censors  of  their  neighbors  that  he  never  took  any 
notice  of  it.  Besides  he  knew  nothing  of  Frau  Sabine  except 
her  bare  neck  and  arms,  and  though  they  were  pleasing  enough, 
they  did  not  justify  his  coming  to  a definite  opinion  about  her. 
However,  he  was  conscious  of  a kindly  feeling  towards  her: 
and  in  a contradictory  spirit  he  was  especially  grateful  to  her 
for  displeasing  Frau  Vogel. 

After  dinner  in  the  evening  when  it  was  very  hot  it  was 
impossible  to  stay  in  the  stifling  yard,  where  the  sun  shone 
the  whole  afternoon.  The  only  place  in  the  house  where  it 
was  possible  to  breathe  was  the  rooms  looking  into  the  street. 
Euler  and  his  son-in-law  used  sometimes  to  go  and  sit  on  the 
doorstep  with  Louisa.  Frau  Vogel  and  Kosa  would  only  appear 
for  a moment:  they  were  kept  by  their  housework:  Frau  Vogel 
took  a pride  in  showing  that  she  had  no  time  for  dawdling: 
and  she  used  to  say,  loudly  enough  to  be  overheard,  that  all 
the  people  sitting  there  and  yawning  on  their  doorsteps,  with- 


263 


JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 


out  doing  a stitch  of  work,  got  on  her  nerves.  As  she  could 
not — (to  her  sorrow) — compel  them  to  work,  she  would  pre- 
tend not  to  see  them,  and  would  go  in  and  work  furiously. 
Rosa  thought  she  must  do  likewise.  Euler  and  Vogel  would 
discover  draughts  everywhere,  and  fearful  of  catching  cold, 
would  go  up  to  their  rooms:  they  used  to  go  to  bed  early,  and 
would  have  thought  themselves  ruined  had  they  changed  the 
least  of  their  habits.  After  nine  o’clock  only  Louisa  and  Chris- 
tophe  would  be  left.  Louisa  spent  the  day  in  her  room:  and, 
in  the  evening,  Christophe  used  to  take  pains  to  be  with  her, 
whenever  he  could,  to  make  her  take  the  air.  If  she  were  left 
alone  she  would  never  go  out : the  noise  of  the  street  frightened 
her.  Children  were  always  chasing  each  other  with  shrill  cries. 

All  the  dogs  of  the  neighborhood  took  it  up  and  barked.  The 
sound  of  a piano  came  up,  a little  farther  off  a clarinet,  and  in 
the  next  street  a cornet  k piston.  Voices  chattered.  People  ■ 
came  and  went  and  stood  in  groups  in  front  of  their  houses,  s 

Louisa  would  have  lost  her  head  if  she  had  been  left  alone 

in  all  the  uproar.  But  when  her  son  was  with  her  it  gave  her  . 

pleasure.  The  noise  would  gradually  die  down.  The  children  | 

and  the  dogs  would  go  to  bed  first.  The  groups  of  people  would  ; 
break  up.  The  air  would  become  more  pure.  Silence  would 
descend  upon  the  street.  Louisa  would  tell  in  her  thin  voice 
the  little  scraps  of  news  that  she  had  heard  from  Amalia  or  ; 
Rosa.  She  was  not  greatly  interested  in  them.  But  she  never  ( 
knew  what  to  talk  about  to  her  son,  and  she  felt  the  need  of  r 
keeping  in  touch  with  him,  of  saying  something  to  him.  And 
Christophe,  who  felt  her  need,  would  pretend  to  be  interested  • 
in  everything  she  said : but  he  did  not  listen.  He  was  off  in 
vague  dreams,  turning  over  in  his  mind  the  doings  of  the  day. 

One  evening  when  they  were  sitting  there — while  his  mother 
was  talking  he  saw  the  door  of  the  draper’s  shop  open.  A 
woman  came  out  silently  and  sat  in  the  street.  Her  chair 
'was  only  a few  yards  from  Louisa.  She  was  sitting  in  the 
darkest  shadow.  Christophe  could  not  see  her  face : but  he  rec- 
ognized her.  His  dreams  vanished.  Th^  air  seemed  sweeter 
to  him.  Louisa  had  not  noticed  Sabine’s  presence,  and  went 
on  with  her  chatter  in  a low  voice.  Christophe  paid  more 
attention  to  her,  and  he  felt  impelled  to  throw  out  a remark 


YOUTH 


263 


here  and  there,  to  talk,  perhaps  to  be  heard.  The  s ight  fi^re 
sat  there  without  stirring,  a little  limp,  with  her  legs  lightly 
crossed  and  her  hands  lying  crossed  in  her  lap.  She  was  look- 
ing straight  in  front  of  her,  and  seemed  to  hear  nothing 
was  overcome  with  drowsiness.  She  went  in.  Christophe  said 
he  would  stay  a little  longer. 

It  was  nearly  ten.  The  street  was  empty.  The  people  were 
going  indoors.  The  sound  of  the  shops  being  shut  was  heard. 
The  lighted  windows  winked  and  then  were  dark  again.  One 
or  two  were  still  lit:  then  they  were  blotted  out.  Silence.  . . . 
They  were  alone,  they  did  not  look  at  each  other  they  held 
their  breath,  they  seemed  not  to  be  aware  of  each  other  Froin 
the  distant  fields  came  the  smell  of  the  new-mown  hay  and 
from  a balcony  in  a house  near  by  the  scent  of  a pot  of  cloves^ 
No  wind  stirred.  Above  their  heads  was  the  Milky  Way.  To 
their  right  red  Jupiter.  Above  a chimney  Charles  Wain  bent 
its  axles : in  the  pale  green  sky  its  stars  flowered  like  daisies. 
From  the  bells  of  the  parish  church  eleven  o clock  rang  out 
and  was  caught  up  by  all  the  other  churches,  with  their  voices 
clear  or  muffled,  and,  from  the  houses,  by  the  dim  chiming  oi 
the  clock  or  husky  cuckoos. 

They  awoke  suddenly  from  their  dreams,  and  got  up  at  the 
same  moment.  And  just  as  they  were  going  indoors  they  b^h 
bowed  without  speaking.  Christophe  went  up  to  his  room.  He 
lighted  his  candle,  and  sat  down  by  his  desk  with  his  head  m 
his  hands,  and  stayed  so  for  a long  time  without  a thought. 

Then  he  sighed  and  went  to  bed.  . x t,- 

Next  day  when  he  got  up,  mechanically  he  went  to  ms 
window  to  look  down  into  Sabine’s  room.  But  the  curtains 
were  drawn.  They  were  drawn  the  whole  morning.  They  were 
drawn  ever  after. 


Next  evening  Christophe  proposed  to  his  mother  that  they 
should  go  again  to  sit  by  the  door.  He  did  so  regularly.  Louisa 
was  glad  of  it:  she  did  not  like  his  shutting  himself  up  in 
his  room  immediately  after  dinner  with  the  window  and  shutters 

closed The  little  silfent  shadow  never  failed  to  come  and  sit 

in  its  usual  place.  They  gave  each  other  a quick  nod,  which 
Louisa  never  noticed.  Christophe  would  talk  to  his  mother. 


264  JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 


Sabine  would  smile  at  her  little  girl,  playing  in  the  street: 
about  nine  she  would  go  and  put  her  to  bed  and  would  then 
return  noiselessly.  If  she  stayed  a little  Christophe  would 
begin  to  be  afraid  that  she  would  not  come  back.  He  would 
listen  for  sounds  in  the  house,  the  laughter  of  the  little  girl 
who  would  not  go  to  sleep:  he  would  hear  the  rustling  of 
Sabine’s  dress  before  she  appeared  on  the  threshold  of  the  shop. 
Then  he  would  look  away  and  talk  to  his  mother  more  eagerly. 
Sometimes  he  would  feel  that  Sabine  was  looking  at  him.  In 
turn  he  would  furtively  look  at  her.  But  their  eyes  would 
never  meet. 

The  child  was  a bond  between  them.  She  would  run  about 
in  the  street  with  other  children.  They  would  find  amusement 
in  teasing  a good-tempered  dog  sleeping  there  with  his  nose 
in  his  paws : he  would  cock  a red  eye  and  at  last  would  emit  a 
growl  of  boredom:  then  they  would  fly  this  way  and  that 
screaming  in  terror  and  happiness.  The  little  girl  would  give  ■ 
piercing  shrieks,  and  look  behind  her  as  though  she  were  being  • 
pursued : she  would  throw  herself  into  Louisa’s  lap,  and  Louisa 
would  smile  fondly.  She  would  keep  the  child  and  question 
her:  and  so  she  would  enter  into  conversation  with  Sabine. 
Christophe  never  joined  in.  He  never  spoke  to  Sabine.  Sabine 
never  spoke  to  him.  By  tacit  agreement  they  pretended  to  ^ 

ignore  each  other.  But  he  never  lost  a word  of  what  they  i 

said  as  they  talked  over  him.  His  silence  seemed  unfriendly  ; 

to  Louisa.  Sabine  never  thought  it  so : but  it  would  make  her  j 

shy,  and  she  would  grow  confused  in  her  remarks.  Then  she  ; 

would  find  some  excuse  for  going  in.  1 

For  a whole  week  Louisa  kept  indoors  for  a cold.  Christophe  ii 
and  Sabine  were  left  alone.  The  first  time  they  were  fright- 
ened by  it.  Sabine,  to  seem  at  her  ease,  took  her  little  girl  on 
her  knees  and  loaded  her  with  caresses.  Christophe  was 
embarrassed  and  did  not  know  whether  he  ought  to  go  on  " 

ignoring  what  was  happening  at  his  side.  It  became  difficult:  J 

although  they  had  not  spoken  a single  word  to  each  other,  " 

they  did  know  each  other,  thanks  to  Louisa.  He  tried  to  begin  j 

several  times:  but  the  words  stuck  in  his  throat.  Once  more  ' 

the  little  girl  extricated  them  from  their  difficulty.  She  played 
hide-and-seek,  and  went  round  Christophe’s  chair.  He  caught 


YOUTH 


265 


her  as  she  passed  and  kissed  her.  He  was  not  very  fond  of 
children : but  it  was  curiously  pleasant  to  him  to  kiss  the  little 
girl.  She  struggled  to  be  free,  for  she  was  busy  with  her  game. 
He  teased  her,  she  bit  his  hands ; he  let  her  fall.  Sabine  laughed. 
They  looked  at  the  child  and  exchanged  a few  trivial  words. 
Then  Christophe  tried— (he  thought  he  must)— to  enter  into 
conversation:  but  he  had  nothing  very  much  to  go  upon:  and 
Sabine  did  not  make  his  task  any  the  easier : she  only  repeated 

what  he  said : 

It  is  a fine  evening.” 

Yes.  It  is  a very  fine  evening.” 

Impossible  to  breathe  in  the  yard.” 

Yes.  The  yard  was  stifiing.” 

Conversation  became  very  difficult.  Sabine  discovered  that 
it  was  time  to  take  the  little  girl  in,  and  went  in  herself : and 
she  did  not  appear  again. 

Christophe  was  afraid  she  would  do  the  same  on  the  evenings 
that  followed  and  that  she  would  avoid  being  left  alone  with 
him,  as  long  as  Louisa  was  not  there.  But  on  the  contrary, 
the  next  evening  Sabine  tried  to  resume  their  conversation. 
She  did  so  deliberately  rather  than  for  pleasure:  she  was 
obviously  taking  a great  deal  of  trouble  to  find  subjects  of 
conversation,  and  bored  ^ith  the  questions  she  put : questions 
and  answers  came  between  heartbreaking  silences.  Christophe 
remembered  his  first  interviews  with  Otto : but  with  Sabine 
their  subjects  were  even  more  limited  than  then,  and  she  had 
not  Otto’s  patience.  When  she  saw  the  small  success  of  her 
endeavors  she  did  not  try  any  more : she  had  to  give  herself 
too  much  trouble,  and  she  lost  interest  in  it.  She  said  no  more, 
and  he  followed  her  lead. 

And  then  there  was  sweet  peace  again.  The  night  was  calm 
once  more,  and  they  returned  to  their  inward  thoughts.  Sabine 
rocked  slowly  in  her  chair,  dreaming.  Christophe  also  was 
dreaming.  They  said  nothing.  After  half  an  hour  Christophe 
began  to  talk  to  himself,  and  in  a low  voice  cried  out  with 
pleasure  in  the  delicious  scent  brought  by  the  soft  wind  that 
came  from  a cart  of  strawberries.  Sabine  said  a word  or  two 
in  reply.  Again  they  were  silent.  They  were  enjoying  the 
charm  of  these  indefinite  silences,  and  trivial  words.  Their 


266 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


dreams  were  the  same,  they  had  but  one  thought : they  did  not  ' 
know  what  it  was:  they  did  not  admit  it  to  themselves.  At 
eleven  they  smiled  and  parted. 

Next  day  they  did  not  even  try  to  talk:  they  resumed  their 
sweet  silence.  At  long  intervals  a word  or  two  let  them  know 
that  they  were  thinking  of  the  same  things. 

Sabine  began  to  laugh. 

How  much  better  it  is/^  she  said,  not  to  try  to  talk ! One 
thinks  one  must,  and  it  is  so  tiresome ! 

Ah ! said  Christophe  with  conviction,  if  only  everybody 
thought  the  same.^^ 

They  both  laughed.  They  were  thinking  of  Frau  Vogel. 

Poor  woman said  Sabine;  ^^how  exhausting  she  is!^^ 

She  is  never  exhausted,^^  replied  Christophe  gloomily. 

She  was  tickled  by  his  manner  and  his  jest. 

You  think  it  amusing?  he  asked.  That  is  easy  for  you.  ; 
You  are  sheltered.^^ 

So  I am,^^  said  Sabine.  I lock  myself  in.’^  She  had  a ‘ 
little  soft  laugh  that  hardly  sounded.  Christophe  heard  it  with  t 
delight  in  the  calm  of  the  evening.  He  snulfed  the  fresh  air^.  * 
luxuriously.  ; 

Ah ! It  is  good  to  be  silent ! he  said,  stretching  his  limbs. 

And  talking  is  no  use ! said  she. 

^^Yes,"*^  returned  Christophe,  "^we  understand  each  other  so  i 

well ! I 

They  relapsed  into  silence.  In  the  darkness  they  could  not  | 
see  each  other.  They  were  both  smiling.  ] 

And  yet,  though  they  felt  the  same,  when  they  were  together — i 
or  imagined  that  they  did — in  reality  they  knew  nothing  of  i 
each  other.  Sabine  did  not  bother  about  it.  Christophe  was  : 
more  curious.  One  evening  he  asked  her : 

^ Do  you  like  music  ? 

No,^^  she  said  simply.  It  bores  me.  I don’t  understand 
it.” 

Her  frankness  charmed  him.  He  was  sick  of  the  lies  of  people 
who  said  that  they  were  mad  about  music,  and  were  bored  to 
death  when  they  heard  it : and  it  seemed  to  him  almost  a virtue 
not  to  like  it  and  to  say  so.  He  asked  if  Sabine  read. 

No.  She  had  no  books.”  ^ 


YOUTH 


267 


He  offered  to  lend  her  his. 

“ Serious  books?”  she  asked  uneasily. 

“ Hot  serious  books  if  she  did  not  want  them.  Poetry.” 

“ But  those  are  serious  books.” 

“ Novels,  then.” 

She  pouted. 

“ They  don’t  interest  you  ? ” 

“Yes.  She  was  interested  in  them;  but  they  were  always 
too  long ; she  never  had  the  patience  to  finish  them.  She  for- 
got the  beginning : skipped  chapters  and  then  lost  the  thread. 
And  then  she  threw  the  book  away.” 

“ Fine  interest  you  take ! ” 

“ Bah ! Enough  for  a story  that  is  not  true.  She  kept  her 
interest  for  better  things  than  books.” 

“For  the  theater,  then?” 

“No.  . . . No.” 

“ Didn’t  she  go  to  the  theater  ? ” 

“No.  It  was  too  hot.  There  were  too  many  people.  So 
much  better  at  home.  The  lights  tired  her  eyes.  And  the 
actors  were  so  ugly ! ” 

He  agreed  with  her  in  that.  But  there  were  other  things  in 
the  theater:  the  play,  for  instance. 

“ Yes,”  she  said  absently.  “ But  I have  no  time.” 

“ What  do  you  do  all  day  ? ” 

She  smiled. 

“ There  is  so  much  to  do.” 

“ True,”  said  he.  “ There  is  your  shop.” 

“ Oh ! ” she  said  calmly.  “ That  does  not  take  much  time.” 

“Your  little  girl  takes  up  your  time  then?” 

“ Oh ! no,  poor  child ! She  is  very  good  and  plays  by  her- 
self.” 

“Then?” 

He  begged  pardon  for  his  indiscretion.  But  she  was  amused 
by  it. 

“ There  are  so  many  things.” 

“ What  things  ? ” 

“ She  could  not  say.  All  sorts  of  things.  Getting  up,  dress- 
ing, thinking  of  dinner,  cooking  dinner,  eating  dinner,  thinking 
of  supper,  cleaning  her  room.  . . . And  then  the  day  was  over. 


268  JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 

. . . And  besides  you  must  have  a little  time  for  doing  noth- 
ing ! 

And  you  are  not  bored 

Never 

Even  when  you  are  doing  nothing  ? 

Especially  when  I am  doing  nothing.  It  is  much  worse 
doing  something:  that  bores  me/^ 

They  looked  at  each  other  and  laughed. 

^^You  are  very  happy  said  Christophe.  can’t  do 

nothing.” 

It  seems  to  me  that  you  know  how.” 

I have  been  learning  lately.” 

Ah ! well,  you’ll  learn.” 

When  he  left  off  talking  to  her  he  was  at  his  ease  and  com- 
fortable. It  was  enough  for  him  to  see  her.  He  was  rid  of  * 
his  anxieties,  and  irritations,  and  the  nervous  trouble  that  ; 
made  him  sick  at  heart.  When  he  was  talking  to  her  he  was  i 
beyond  care : and  so  when  he  thought  of  her.  He  dared  not  5 
admit  it  to  himself : but  as  soon  as  he  was  in  her  presence, 
he  was  filled  with  a delicious  soft  emotion  that  brought  him  | 
almost  to  unconsciousness.  At  night;  he  slept  as  he  had  never  ? 
done.  ; 

When  he  came  back  from  his  work  he  would  look  into  j 
this  shop.  It  was  not  often  that  he  did  not  see  Sabine.  They  j 
bowed  and  smiled.  Sometimes  she  was  at  the  door  and 
then  they  would  exchange  a few  words:  and  he  would  open  j 
the  door  and  call  the  little  girl  and  hand  her  a packet  of  | 
sweets.  ( 

One  day  he  decided  to  go  in.  He  pretended  that  he  wanted  i 
some  waistcoat  buttons.  She  began  to  look  for  them : but  she  ' 
could  not  find  them.  All  the  buttons  were  mixed  up:  it  was 
impossible  to  pick  them  out.  She  was  a 'little  put  out  that  he 
should  see  her  untidiness.  He  laughed  at  it  and  bent  over  the 
better  to  see  it. 

No,”  she  said,  trying  to  hide  the  drawers  with  her  hands. 

Don’t  look ! It  is  a dreadful  muddle.  ...” 

She  went  on  looking.  But  Christophe  embarrassed  her.  She 
was  cross,  and  as  she  pushed  the  drawer  back  she  said : 


YOUTH 


269 


“I  can’t  find  any.  Go  to  Lisi,  in  the  next  street.  She 
is  sure  to  have  them.  She  has  everything  that  people 
want.” 

He  laughed  at  her  way  of  doing  business. 

“ Do  you  send  all  your  customers  away  like  that  ? ” 

“ Well.  You  are  not  the  first,”  said  Sabine  warmly. 

And  yet  she  was  a little  ashamed. 

“ It  is  too  much  trouble  to  tidy  up,”  she  said.  “ I put  off 
doing  it  from  day  to  day.  ...  But  I shall  certainly  do  it 
to-morrow.” 

“Shall  I help  you?”  asked  Christophe. 

She  refused.  She  would  gladly  have  accepted : but  she  dared 
not,  for  fear  of  gossip.  And  besides  it  humiliated  her. 

They  went  on  talking. 

“ And  your  buttons  ? ” she  said  to  Christophe  a moment  later. 
“ Aren’t  you  going  to  Lisi  ? ” 

“Never,”  said  Christophe.  “I  shall  wait  until  you  have 
tidied  up.” 

“ Oh ! ” said  Sabine,  who  had  already  forgotten  what  she 
had  just  said,  “ don’t  wait  all  that  time ! ” 

Her  frankness  delighted  them  both. 

Christophe  went  to  the  drawer  that  she  had  shut. 

“ Let  me  look.” 

She  ran  to  prevent  his  doing  so. 

“ No,  now  please.  I am  sure  I haven’t  any.” 

“ I bet  you  have.” 

At  once  he  found  the  button  he  wanted,  and  was  triumphant. 
He  wanted  others.  He  wanted  to  go  on  rummaging:  but  she 
snatched  the  box  from  his  hands,  and,  hurt  in  her  vanity,  she 
began  to  look  herself. 

The  light  was  fading.  She  went  to  the  window.  Christophe 
sat  a little  away  fron\  her:  the  little  girl  clambered  on  to  his 
knees.  He  pretended  to  listen  to  her  chatter  and  answered  her 
absently.  He  was  looking  at  Sabine  and  she  knew  that  he  was 
looking  at  her.  She  bent  over  the  box.  He  could  see  her  neck 
and  a little  of  her  cheek.— And  as  he  looked  he  saw  that  she 
was  blushing.  And  he  blushed  too. 

The  child  went  on  talking.  No  one  answered  her.  Sabine 
did  not  move.  Christophe  could  not  see  what  she  was  doing: 


270 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


he  was  sure  she  was  doing  nothing:  she  was  not  even  looking 
at  the  box  in  her  hands.  The  silence  went  on  and  on.  The 
little  girl  grew  uneasy  and  slipped  down  from  Christophe’s 
knees. 

“ Why  don’t  you  say  anything?  ” 

Sabine  turned  sharply  and  took  her  in  her  arms.  The  box 
was  spilled  on  the  floor:  the  little  girl  shouted  with  glee  and 
ran  on  hands  and  knees  after  the  buttons  rolling  under  the 
furniture.  Sabine  went  to  the  window  again  and  laid  her  cheek 


against  the  pane.  She  seemed  to  be  absorbed  in  what  she  saw 
i'li'l  outside. 

! ii  “ Good-night ! ” said  Christophe,  ill  at  ease.  She  did  not 


turn  her  head,  and  said  in  a low  voice : 

“ Good-night.” 

On  Sundays  the  house  was  empty  during  the  afternoon.  The  < 
whole  family  went  to  church  for  Vespers.  Sabine  did  not  go.  j 
Christophe  jokingly  reproached  her  with  it  once  when  he  saw  ! 
her  sitting  at  her  door  in  the  little  garden,  while  the  lovely  bells 
were  bawling  themselves  hoarse  summoning  her.  She  replied  i 

in  the  same  tone  that  only  Mass  was  compulsory : not  Vespers : i 
it  was  then  no  use,  and  perhaps  a little  indiscreet  to  be  too  I 
zealous : and  she  liked  to  think  that  God  would  be  rather  pleased  i 
than  angry  with  her.  \ 

“You  have  made  God  in  your  own  image,”  said  Christophe.  j 
“ I should  be  so  bored  if  I were  in  His  place,”  replied  she  with  j 
conviction.  ) 

“ You  would  not  bother  much  about  the  world  if  you  were  in  ■; 
His  place.”  ' i 

“ All  that  I should  ask  of  it  would  be  that  it  should  not  bother 
itself  about  me.” 

“ Perhaps  it  would  be  none  the  worse  for  that,”  said  Chris-  | 
tophe.  V 

“ Tssh ! ” cried  Sabine,  “ we  are  being  irreligious.”  || 

“ I don’t  see  anything  irreligious  in  saying  that  God  is  like  | 
you.  I am  sure  He  is  flattered.”  1 

“ Will  you  be  silent ! ” said  Sabine,  half  laughing,  half  angry.  I 
She  was  beginning  to  be  afraid  that  God  would  be  scandalized,  i 


She  quickly  turned  the  conversation. 


YOUTH 


271 


"Besides,”  she  said,  “it  is  the  only  time  in  the  week  when 

one  can  enjoy  the  garden  in  peace.”  i , i. 

“ Yes,”  said  Christophe.  “ They  are  gone.  They  looked  at 

each  other.  . j j... 

“ How  silent  it  is,”  muttered  Sabine.  We  are  not  used  to 

it.  One  hardly  knows  where  one  is.  . . .” 

“Oh!”  cried  Christophe  suddenly  and  angrily. 

“ There  are  days  when  I would  like  to  strangle  her  1 There 
was  no  need  to  ask  of  whom  he  was  speaking. 

“And  the  others?”  asked  Sabine  gaily. 

“ True,”  said  Christophe,  a little  abashed.  “ There  is 

Kosa.” 

“ Poor  child ! ” said  Sabine. 


They  were  silent.  i, 

“ If  only  it  were  always  as  it  is  now ! ” sighed  Christophe. 
She  raised  her  laughing  eyes  to  his,  and  then  dropped  them. 
He  saw  that  she  was  working. 

“ What  are  you  doing?”  he  asked. 

(The  fence  of  ivy  that  separated  the  two  gardens  was  between 

them.)  . , 1.  • 

“ Look ! ” she  said,  lifting  a basin  that  she  was  holdmg  in 

her  lap.  “ I am  shelling  peas.” 

She  sighed. 

“But  that  is  not  unpleasant,”  he  said,  laughing. 

“ Oh!  ” she  replied,  “ it  is  disgusting,  always  having  to  think 

of  dinner.”  u 

“I  bet  that  if  it  were  possible,”  he  said,  you  would  go 
without  your  dinner  rather  than  have  the  trouble  of  cooking 
it.” 

“That’s  true,”  cried  she. 

“ Wait ! I’ll  come  and  help  you.” 

He  climbed  over  the  fence  and  came  to  her. 

She  was  sitting  in  a chair  in  the  door.  He  sat  on  a step 
at  her  feet.  He  dipped  into  her  lap  for  handfuls  of  green 
pods;  and  he  poured  the  little  round  peas  into  the  basin  that 
Sabine  held  between  her  knees.  He  looked  down.  He  saw 
Sabine’s  black  stockings  clinging  to  her  ankles  and  feet— one 
of  her  feet  was  half  out  of  its  shoe.  He  dared  not  raise  his 
eyes  to  look  at  her. 


273 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


The  air  was  heavy.  The  sky  was  dull  and  clouds  hung  low: 
there  was  no  wind.  No  leaf  stirred.  The  garden  was  inclosed 
within  high  walls:  there  was  no  world  beyond  them. 

The  child  had  gone  out  with  one  of  the  neighbors.  They  were 
alone.  They  said  nothing.  They  could  say  nothing.  Without 
looking  he  went  on  taking  handfuls  of  peas  from  Sabine’s 
lap:  his  fingers  trembled  as  he  touched  her:  among  the  fresh 
smooth  pods  they  met  Sabine’s  fingers,  and  they  trembled  too. 
They  could  not  go  on.  They  sat  still,  not  looking  at  each  other : 
she  leaned  back  in  her  chair  with  her  lips  half-open  and  her 
arms  hanging:  he  sat  at  her  feet  leaning  against  her:  along 
his  shoulder  and  arm  he  could  feel  the  warmth  of  Sabine’s  leg. 
They  were  breathless.  Christophe  laid  his  hands  against  the 
stones  to  cool  them:  one  of  his  hands  touched  Sabine’s  foot, 
that  she  had  thrust  out  of  her  shoe,  and  he  left  it  there,  could 
not  move  it.  They  shivered.  Almost  they  lost  control.  Chris-  ' 
tophe’s  hand  closed  on  the  slender  toes  of  Sabine’s  little  foot,  i 
Sabine  turned  cold,  the  sweat  broke  out  on  her  brow,  she  leaned  ’ 
towards  Christophe.  ...  , 

Familiar  voices  broke  the  spell.  They  trembled.  Christophe  * 
leaped  to  his  feet  and  crossed  the  fence  again.  Sabine  picked  ■ 
up  the  shells  in  her  lap  and  went  in.  In  the  yard  he  turned.  • 
She  was  at  her  door.  They  looked  at  each  other.  Drops  of  ; 
rain  were  beginning  to  patter  on  the  leaves  of  the  trees.  ...  i 
She  closed  her  door.  Frau  Vogel  and  Eosa  came  in.  . . . He  i 
went  up  to  his  room.  ...  > 

In  the  yellow  light  of  the  waning  day  drowned  in  the  torrents  ' 
of  rain,  he  got  up  from  his  desk  in  response  to  an  irresistible  i 
impulse:  he  ran  to  his  window  and  held  out  his  arms  to  the  * 
opposite  window.  At  the  same  moment  through  the  opposite 
window  in  the  half-darkness  of  the  room  he  saw — ^he  thought 
he  saw — Sabine  holding  out  her  arms  to  him. 

He  rushed  from  his  room.  He  went  downstairs.  He  ran  to 
the  garden  fence.  At  the  risk  of  being  seen  he  was  about  to 
clear  it.  But  when  he  looked  at  the  window  at  which  she  had 
appeared,  he  saw  that  the  shutters  were  closed.  The  house 
seemed  to  be  asleep.  He  stopped.  Old  Euler,  going  to  his 
cellar,  saw  him  and  called  him.  He  retraced  his  footsteps.  He 
thought  he  must  have  been  dreaming.  > 


YOUTH 


373 


It  was  not  long  before  Kosa  began  to  see  what  was  happening. 
She  had  no  diffidence  and  she  did  not  yet  know  what  jealousy 
was.  She  was  ready  to  give  wholly  and  to  ask  nothing  in  return. 
But  if  she  was  sorrowfully  resigned  to  not  being  loved  by 
Christophe,  she  had  never  considered  the  possibility  of  Chris- 
tophe  loving  another. 

One  evening,  after  dinner,  she  had  just  finished  a piece  of 
embroidery  at  which  she  had  been  working  for  months.  She 
was  happy,  and  wanted  for  once  in  a way  to  leave  her  work  and 
go  and  talk  to  Christophe.  She  waited  until  her  mother’s 
back  was  turned  and  then  slipped  from  the  room.  She  crept 
from  the  house  like  a truant.  She  wanted  to  go  and  confound 
Christophe,  who  had  vowed  scornfully  that  she  would  never 
finish  her  work.  She  thought  it  would  be  a good  joke  to  go 
and  take  them  by  surprise  in  the  street.  It  was  no  use  the 
poor  child  knowing  how  Christophe  felt  towards  her:  she  was 
always  inclined  to  measure  the  pleasure  which  others  should 
have  at  seeing  her  by  that  which  she  had  herself  in  meeting 
them. 

She  went  out.  Christophe  and  Sabine  were  sitting  as  usual 
in  front  of  the  house.  There  was  a catch  at  Rosa’s  heart.  And 
yet  she  did  not  stop  for  the  irrational  idea  that  was  in  her: 
and  she  chaffed  Christophe  warmly.  The  sound  of  her  shrill 
voice  in  the  silence  of  the  night  struck  on  Christophe  like  a 
false  note.  He  started  in  his  chair,  and  frowned  angrily.  Rosa 
waved  her  embroidery  in  his  face  triumphantly.  Christophe 
snubbed  her  impatiently. 

“ It  is  finished — finished ! ” insisted  Rosa. 

“ Oh ! well — go  and  begin  another,”  said  Christophe  curtly. 

Rosa  was  crestfallen.  All  her  delight  vanished.  Christophe 
went  on  crossly:. 

“And  when  you  have  done  thirty,  when  you  are  very  old, 
you  will  at  least  be  able  to  say  to  yourself  that  your  life  has 
not  been  wasted ! ” 

Rosa  was  near  weeping. 

“ How  cross  you  are,  Christophe ! ” she  said. 

Christophe  was  ashamed  and  spoke  kindly  to  her.  She  was 
satisfied  with  so  little  that  she  regained  confidence:  and  she 
began  once  more  to  chatter  noisily:  she  could  not  speak  low, 


274 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


she  shouted  deafeningly,  like  everybody  in  the  house.  In  spite 
of  himself  Christophe  could  not  conceal  his  ill-humor.  At 
first  he  answered  her  with  a few  irritated  monosyllables:  then 
he  said  nothing  at  all,  turned  his  back  on  her,  fidgeted  in  his 
chair,  and  ground  his  teeth  as  she  rattled  on.  Kosa  saw  that 
he  was  losing  his  temper  and  knew  that  she  ought  to  stop: 
but  she  went  on  louder  than  ever.  Sabine,  a few  yards  away, 
in  the  dark,  said  nothing,  watched  the  scene  with  ironic  im- 
passivity. Then  she  was  weary  and,  feeling  that  the  evening 
was  wasted,  she  got  up  and  went  in.  Christophe  only  noticed 
her  departure  after  she  had  gone.  He  got  up  at  once  and 
without  ceremony  went  away  with  a curt  Good-evening/^ 

Eosa  was  left  alone  in  the  street,  and  looked  in  bewilderment 
at  the  door  by  which  he  had  just  gone  in.  Tears  came  to  her  , 
eyes.  She  rushed  in,  went  up  to  her  room  without  a sound,  ’i 
so  as  not  to  have  to  talk  to  her  mother,  undressed  hurriedly,  '1 
and  when  she  was  in  her  bed,  buried  under  the  clothes,  sobbed  j 
and  sobbed.  She  made  no  attempt  to  think  over  what  had  ' 
passed : she  did  not  ask  herself  whether  Christophe  loved  Sabine,  ^ 
or  whether  Christophe  and  Sabine  could  not  bear  her : she  knew  * 
only  that  all  was  lost,  that  life  was  useless,  that  there  was  noth-  ' 
ing  left  to  her  but  death.  ; 

Next  morning  thought  came  to  her  once  more  with  eternal  4 
illusive  hope.  She  recalled  the  events  of  the  evening  and  told  1 
herself  that  she  was  wrong  to  attach  so  much  importance  to  j 
them.  No  doubt  Christophe  did  not  love  her:  she  was  resigned  \ 
to  that,  though  in  her  heart  she  thought,  though  she  did  not  ) 
admit  the  thought,  that  in  the  end  she  would  win  his  love  i 
by  her  love  for  him.  But  what  reason  had  she  for  thinking  < 
that  there  was  anything  between  Sabine  and  him?  How  could 
he,  so  clever  as  he  was,  love  a little  creature  whose  insignificance 
and  mediocrity  were  patent?  She  was  reassured, — ^but  for  that 
she  did  not  watch  Christophe  any  the  less  closely.  She  saw 
nothing  all  day,  because  there  was  nothing  to  see:  but  Chris- 
tophe seeing  her  prowling  about  him  all  day  long  without  any 
sort  of  explanation  was  peculiarly  irritated  by  it.  She  set  the 
crown  on  her  efforts  in  the  evening  when  she  appeared  again 
and  sat  with  them  in  the  street.  The  scene  of  the  previous 
evening  was  repeated.  Eosa  talked  alone.  But  Sabine  did  not  * 


YOUTH 


275 


■wait  so  long  before  she  went  indoors:  and  Christophe  followed 
her  example.  Eosa  could  no  longer  pretend  that  her  presence 
was  not  unwelcome:  but  the  unhappy  girl  tried  to  deceive  her- 
self. She  did  not  perceive  that  she  could  have  done  nothing 
worse  than  to  try  so  to  impose  on  herself : and  with  her  usual 
clumsiness  she  went  on  through  the  succeeding  days. 

Next  day  with  Eosa  sitting  by  his  side  Christophe  waited  in 
vain  for  Sabine  to  appear. 

The  day  after  Eosa  was  alone.  They  had  given  up  the 
struggle.  But  she  gained  nothing  by  it  save  resentment  from 
Christophe,  who  was  furious  at  being  robbed  of  his  beloved 
evenings,  his  only  happiness.  He  was  the  less  inclined  to  for- 
give her,  for  being  absorbed  with  his  own  feelings,  he  had  no 
suspicion  of  Eosa’s. 

Sabine  had  known  them  for  some  time:  she  knew  that  Eosa 
was  jealous  even  before  she  knew  that  she  herself  was  in  love: 
but  she  said  nothing  about  it:  and£,with  the  natural  cruelty 
of  a pretty  woman,  who  is  certain  of  her  victory,  in  quizzical 
silence  she  watched  the  futile  efforts  of  her  awkward  rival. 

Left  mistress  of  the  field  of  battle  Eosa  gazed  piteously  upon 
the  results  of  her  tactics.  The  best  thing  she  could  have  done 
would  have  been  not  to  persist,  and  to  leave  Christophe  alone, 
at  least  for  the  time  being:  but  that  was  not  what  she  did: 
and  as  the  worst  thing  she  could  have  done  was  to  talk  to  him 
about  Sabine,  that  was  precisely  what  she  did. 

With  a fluttering  at  her  heart,  by  way  of  sounding  him,  she 
said  timidly  that  Sabine  was  pretty.  Christophe  replied  curtly 
that  she  was  very  pretty.  And  although  Eosa  might  have  fore- 
seen the  reply  she  would  provoke,  her  heart  thumped  when 
she  heard  him.  She  knew  that  Sabine  was  pretty : but  she  had 
never  particularly  remarked  it:  now  she  saw  her  for  the  first 
time  with  the  eyes  of  Christophe : she  saw  her  delicate  features, 
her  short  nose,  her  fine  mouth,  her  slender  figure,  her  graceful 
movements.  . . . Ah!  how  sad!  . . . What  would  not  she  have 
given  to  possess  Sabine’s  body,  and  live  in  it!  She  did  not  go 
closely  into  why  it  should  be  preferred  to  her  own!  . . . Her 
own ! . . . What  had  she  done  to  possess  such  a body  ? What 
a burden  it  was  upon  her.  How  ugly  it  seemed  to  her!  It 


276 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


was  odious  to  her.  And  to  think  that  nothing  but  death  could 
ever  free  her  from  it!  . . . She  was  at  once  too  proud  and 
too  humble  to  complain  that  she  was  not  loved:  she  had  no 
right  to  do  so:  and  she  tried  even  more  to  humble  herself. 
But  her  instinct  revolted.  . . . No.  It  was  not  just!  . . . Why 
should  she  have  such  a body,  she,  and  not  Sabine?  . . . And 
why  should  Sabine  be  loved?  What  had  she  done  to  be  loved? 

. . . Eosa  saw  her  with  no  kindly  eye,  lazy,  careless,  egoistic, 
indifferent  towards  everybody,  not  looking  after  her  house,  or 
her  child,  or  anybody,  loving  only  herself,  living  only  for  sleep- 
ing, dawdling,  and  doing  nothing.  . . . And  it  was  such  a 
woman  who  pleased  . . . who  pleased  Christophe.  . . . Chris- 
tophe  who  was  so  severe,  Christophe  who  was  so  discerning, 
Christophe  whom  she  esteemed  and  admired  more  than  an}^- 
body ! . . . How  could  Christophe  be  blind  to  it  ? — She  could 
not  help  from  time  to  time  dropping  an  unkind  remark  about  " 
Sabine  in  his  hearing.  She  did  not  wish  to  do  so:  but  the  ' 
impulse  was  stronger  than  herself.  She  was  always  sorry  for  ' 
it,  for  she  was  a kind  creature  and  disliked  speaking  ill  of  t 
anybody.  But  she  was  the  more  sorry  because  she  drew  down  ^ 
on  herself  such  cruel  replies  as  showed  how  much  Christophe  • 
was  in  love.  He  did  not  mince  matters.  Hurt  in  his  love,  : 
he  tried  to  hurt  in  return:  and  succeeded.  Eosa  would  make  - 
no  reply  and  go  out  with  her  head  bowed,  and  her  lips  tight  ! 
pressed  to  keep  from  crying.  She  thought  that  it  was  her  own  { 
fault,  that  she  deserved  it  for  having  hurt  Christophe  by  attack-  | 
ing  the  object  of  his  love.  ' 

Her  mother  was  less  patient.  Frau  Vogel,  who  saw  every-  I 
thing,  and  old  Euler,  also,  had  not  been  slow  to  notice  Chris-  ' 
tophe’s  interviews  with  their  young  neighbor : it  was  not  difficult 
to  guess  their  romance.  Their  secret  projects  of  one  day  marry- 
ing Eosa  to  Christophe  were  set  at  naught  by  it : and  that  seemed 
to  them  a personal  affront  of  Christophe,  although  he  was  not 
supposed  to  know  that  they  had  disposed  of  him  without  con- 
sulting his  wishes.  But  Amalia^s  despotism  did  not  admit  of 
ideas  contrary  to  her  own : and  it  seemed  scandalous  to  her  that 
Christophe  should  have  disregarded  the  contemptuous  opinion 
she  had  often  expressed  of  Sabine. 

She  did  not  hesitate  to  repeat  it  for  his  benefit.  Whenever 


YOUTH 


277 


he  was  present  she  found  some  excuse  for  talking  about  her 
neighbor:  she  cast  about  for  the  most  injurious  things  to  say 
of  her,  things  which  might  sting  Christophe  most  cruelly:  and 
with  the  crudity  of  her  point  of  view  and  language  she  had 
no  difficulty  in  finding  them.  The  ferocious  instinct  of  a 
woman,  so  superior  to  that  of  a man  in  the  art  of  doing  evil, 
as  well  as  of  doing  good,  made  her  insist  less  on  Sabine’s  lazi- 
ness and  moral  failings  than  on  her  uncleanliness.  Her  in- 
discreet and  prying  eye  had  watched  through  the  window  for 
proofs  of  it  in  the  secret  processes  of  Sabine’s  toilet:  and  she 
exposed  them  with  coarse  complacency.  When  from  decency 
she  could  not  say  everything  she  left  the  more  to  be  understood. 

Christophe  would  go  pale  wfith  shame  and  anger:  he  would 
go  white  as  a sheet  and  his  lips  would  quiver.  Eosa,  foreseeing 
what  must  happen,  would  implore  her  mother  to  have  done: 
she  would  even  try  to  defend  Sabine.  But  she  only  succeeded 
in  making  Amalia  more  aggressive. 

And  suddenly  Christophe  would  leap  from  his  chair.  He 
would  thump  on  the  table  and  begin  to  shout  that  it  was  mon- 
strous to  speak  of  a woman,  to  spy  upon  her,  to  expose  her 
misfortunes:  only  an  evil  mind  could  so  persecute  a creature 
who  was  good,  charming,  quiet,  keeping  herself  to  herself,  and 
doing  no  harm  to  anybody,  and  speaking  no  ill  of  anybody. 
But  they  were  making  a great  mistake  if  they  thought  they 
could  do  her  harm : they  only  made  him  more  sympathetic  and 
made  her  kindness  shine  forth  only  the  more  clearly. 

Amalia  would  feel  then  that  she  had  gone  too  far:  but  she 
was  hurt  by  feeling  it:  and,  shifting  her  ground,  she  would 
say  that  it  was  only  too  easy  to  talk  of  kindness : that  the  word 
was  called  in  as  an  excuse  for  everything.  Heavens!  It  was 
easy  enough  to  be  thought  kind  when  you  never  bothered  about 
anything  or  anybody,  and  never  did  your  duty! 

To  which  Christophe  would  reply  that  the  first  duty  of  all 
was  to  make  life  pleasant  for  others,  but  that  there  were  people 
for  whom  duty  meant  only  ugliness,  unpleasantness,  tiresome- 
ness, and  everything  that  interferes  with  the  liberty  of  others 
and  annoys  and  injures  their  neighbors,  their  servants,  their 
families,  and  themselves.  God  save  us  from  such  people,  and 
such  a notion  of  duty,  as  from  the  plague ! . . . 


278 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


They  would  grow  venomous.  Amalia  would  be  very  bitter. 
Christophe  would  not  budge  an  inch. — And  the  result  of  it  all 
was  that  henceforth  Christophe  made  a point  of  being  seen  con- 
tinually with  Sabine.  He  would  go  and  knock  at  her  door. 
He  would  talk  gaily  and  laugh  with  her.  He  would  choose! 
moments  when  Amalia  and  Eosa  could  see  him.  Amalia  would 
avenge  herself  with  angry  words.  But  the  innocent  Eosa^s  heart 
was  rent  and  torn  by  this  refinement  of  cruelty:  she  felt  that 
he  detested  them  and  wished  to  avenge  himself:  and  she  wept 
bitterly. 

So,  Christophe,  who  had  suffered  so  much  from  injustice, 
learned  unjustly  to  inflict  suffering. 

Some  time  after  that  Sabine’s  brother,  a miller  at  Landegg, 
a little  town  a few  miles  away,  was  to  celebrate  the  christening 
of  a child.  Sabine  was  to  be  godmother.  She  invited  Chris-*| 
tophe.  He  had  no  liking  for  these  functions:  but  for  the< 
pleasure  of  annoying  the  Vogels  and  of  being  with  Sabine  he? 
accepted  eagerly. 

Sabine  gave  herself  the  malicious  satisfaction  of  inviting?, 
Amalia  and  Eosa  also,  being  quite  sure  that  they  would  refuse.? 
They  did.  Eosa  was  longing  to  accept.  She  did  not  dislike 
Sabine:  sometimes  even  her  heart  was  filled  with  tenderness, 
for  her  because  Christophe  loved  her:  sometimes  she  longed  to; 
tell  her  so  and  to  throw  her  arms  about  her  neck.  But  there# 
was  her  mother  and  her  mother’s  example.  She  stiffened  her-j 
self  in  her  pride  and  refused.  Then,  when  they  had  gone,  and^ 
she  thought  of  them  together,  happy  together,  driving  in  the( 
country  on  the  lovely  July  day,  while  she  was  left  shut  up  ini 
her  room,  with  a pile  of  linen  to  mend,  with  her  mother  grum- 
bling by  her  side,  she  thought  she  must  choke:  and  she  cursed 
her  pride.  Oh!  if  there  were  still  time!  . . . Alas!  if  it  were 
all  to  do  again,  she  would  have  done  the  same.  . . . 

The  miller  had  sent  his  wagonette  to  fetch  Christophe  and 
Sabine.  They  took  up  several  guests  from  the  town  and  the 
farms  on  the  road.  It  was  fresh  dry  weather.  The  bright  sun 
made  the  red  berries  of  the  brown  trees  by  the  road  and  the 
wild  cherry  trees  in  the  fields  shine.  Sabine  was  smiling.  Her 
pale  face  was  rosy  under  the  keen  wind.  Christophe  had  her 


little  girl  on  his  knees.  They  did  not  try  to  talk  to  each  other . 
they  talked  to  their  neighbors  without  caring  to  whom  or  of 
what:  they  were  glad  to  hear  each  other’s  voices:  they  were 
glad  to  be  driving  in  the  same  carriage.  They  looked  at  each 
other  in  childish  glee  as  they  pointed  out  to  each  other  a house, 
a tree,  a passerby.  Sabine  loved  the  country:  but  she  hardly 
ever  went  into  it:  her  incurable  laziness  made  excursions  im- 
possible: it  was  almost  a year  since  she  had  been  outside  the 
town : and  so  she  delighted  in  the  smallest  things  she  saw.  They 
were  not  new  to  Christophe : but  he  loved  Sabine,  and  like  all 
lovers  he  saw  everything  through  her  eyes,  and  felt  all  her 
thrills  of  pleasure,  and  all  and  more  than  the  emotion  that 
was  in  her : for,  merging  himself  with  his  beloved,  he  endowed 
her  with  all  that  he  was  himself. 

When  they  came  to  the  mill  they  found  in  the  yard  all  the 
people  of  the  farm  and  the  other  guests,  who  received  them 
with  a deafening  noise.  The  fowls,  the  ducks,  and  the  dogs 
joined  in.  The  miller,  Bertold,  a great  fair-haired  fellow, 
square  of  head  and  shoulders,  as  big  and  tall  as  Sabine  was 
slight,  took  his  little  sister  in  his  arms  and  put  her  down  gently 
as  though  he  were  afraid  of  breaking  her.  It  was  not  long 
before  Christophe  saw  that  the  little  sister,  as  usual,  did  just 
as  she  liked  with  the  giant,  and  that  while  he  made  heavy  fun 
of  her  whims,  and  her  laziness,  and  her  thousand  and  one  fail- 
ings, he  was  at  her  feet,  her  slave.  She  was  used  to  it,  and 
thought  it  natural.  She  did  nothing  to  win  love:  it  seemed 
to  her  right  that  she  should  be  loved : and  if  she  were  not,  did 
not  care : that  is  why  everybody  loved  her. 

Christophe  made  another  discovery  not  so  pleasing.  For  a 
christening  a godfather  is  necessary  as  well  as  a godmother,  and 
the  godfather  has  certain  rights  over  the  godmother,  rights 
which  he  does  not  often  renounce,  especially  when  she  is  young 
and  pretty.  He  learned  this  suddenly  when  he  saw  a fa^Jer, 
^ with  fair  curly  hair,  and  rings  in  his  ears,  go  up  to  S™ine 
’ laughing  and  kiss  her  on  both  cheeks.  Instead  of  telling  IiLm- 
t self  that  he  was  an  ass  to  have  forgotten  this  privilege,  and 
more  than  an  ass  to  be  huffy  about  it,  he  was  cross  with  Sabine, 
as  though  she  had  deliberately  drawn  him  into  the  snare.  His 
crossness  grew  worse  when  he  found  himself  separated  from 

h 


280 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


her  during  the  ceremony.  Sabine  turned  round  every  now  an 
then  as  the  procession  wound  across  the  fields  and  threw  hi^ 
a friendly  glance.  He  pretended  not  to  see  it.  She  felt  thj‘ 
he  was  annoyed,  and  guessed  why : but  it  did  not  trouble  he]  . 
it  amused  her.  If  she  had  had  a real  squabble  with  some  or 
she  loved,  in  spite  of  all  the  pain  it  might  have  caused  he 
she  would  never  have  made  the  least  effort  to  break  down  an 
misunderstanding : it  would  have  been  too  much  trouble.  Ever; 
thing  would  come  right  if  it  were  only  left  alone. 

At  dinner,  sitting  between  the  miller’s  wife  and  a fat  gi:  ' 
with  red  cheeks  whom  he  had  escorted  to  the  service  withoi* 
ever  paying  any  attention  to  her,  it  occurred  to  Christophe  t; 
turn  and  look  at  his  neighbor:  and,  finding  her  comely,  out  c ‘ 
revenge,  he  fiirted  desperately  with  her  with  the  idea  of  catch 
ing  Sabine’s  attention.  He  succeeded:  but  Sabine  was  not  tb 
sort  of  woman  to  be  jealous  of  anybody  or  anything:  so  lon^ 
as  she  was  loved,  she  did  not  care  whether  her  lover  did  o. 
did  not  pay  court  to  others:  and  instead  of  being  angry,  sh 
was  delighted  to  see  Christophe  amusing  himself.  From  th 
other  end  of  the  table  she  gave  him  her  most  charming  smile/ 
Christophe  was  disgruntled : there  was  no  doubt  then  that  Sabin 
was  indifferent  to  him:  and  he  relapsed  into  his  sulky  mood 
from  which  nothing  could  draw  him,  neither  the  soft  eyes  of 
his  neighbor,  nor  the  wine  that  he  drank.  Finally,  when  h 
was  half  asleep,  he  asked  himself  angrily  what  on  earth  h*. 
was  doing  at  such  an  interminable  orgy,  and  did  not  hear  th 
miller  propose  a trip  on  the  water  to  take  certain  of  the  guest 
home.  Nor  did  he  see  Sabine  beckoning  him  to  come  with  hei\ 
so  that  they  should  be  in  the  same  boat.  Wlien  it  occurred^! 
to  him,  there  was  no  room  for  him : and  he  had  to  go  in  anotheT- 
boat.  This  fresh  mishap  was  not  likely  to  make  him  mon 
amiable  until  he  discovered  that  he  was  to  be  rid  of  almos' 
alkhis  companions  on  the  way.  Then  he  relaxed  and  was  pleas 
antt  Besides  the  pleasant  afternoon  on  the  water,  the  pleasure 
of  Fowing,  the  merriment  of  these  good  people,  rid  him  of  hi: 
ill-humor.  As  Sabine  was  no  longer  there  he  lost  his  self 
consciousness,  and  had  no  scruple  about  being  frankly  amusec 
like  the  others. 

They  were  in  their  boats.  They  followed  each  other  closelj^ 


YOUTH 


281 


and  tried  to  pass  each  other.  They  threw  laughing  insults  at 
each  other.  When  the  boats  bumped  Christophe  saw  Sabine’s 
smiling  face : and  he  could  not  help  smiling  too : they  felt  that 
peace  was  made.  He  knew  that  very  soon  they  would  return 
together. 

They  began  to  sing  part  songs.  Each  voice  took  up  a line 
in  time  and  the  refrain  was  taken  up  in  chorus.  The  people 
in  the  different  boats,  some  way  from  each  other,  now  echoed 
each  other.  The  notes  skimmed  over  the  water  like  birds.  From 
time  to  time  a boat  would  go  in  to  the  bank:  a few  peasants 
would  climb  out : they  would  stand  there  and  wave  to  the  boats 
as  they  went  further  and  further  away.  Little  by  little  they 
were  disbanded.  One  by  one  voices  left  the  chorus.  At  last  they 
were  alone,  Christophe,  Sabine,  and  the  miller. 

They  came  back  in  the  same  boat,  floating  down  the  river. 
Christophe  and  Bertold  held  the  oars,  but  they  did  not  row. 
Sabine  sat  in  the  stern  facing  Christophe,  and  talked  to  her 
brother  and  looked  at  Christophe.  Talking  so,  they  were  able 
to  look  at  each  other  undisturbedly.  They  could  never  have 
done  so  had  the  words  ceased  to  flow.  The  deceitful  words 
seemed  to  say : “ It  is  not  you  that  I see.”  But  their  eyes  said 
to  each  other:  ‘'Who  are  you?  Who  are  you?  You  that  I 
love ! ...  You  that  I love,  whoever  you  be ! . . .” 

The  sky  was  clouded,  mists  rose  from  the  fields,  the  river 
steamed,  the  sun  went  down  behind  the  clouds.  Sabine  shivered 
and  wrapped  her  little  black  shawl  round  her  head  and  shoul- 
ders. She  seemed  to  be  tired.  As  the  boat,  hugging  the  bank, 
passed  under  the  spreading  branches  of  the  willows,  she  closed 
her  eyes:  her  thin  face  was  pale:  her  lips  were  sorrowful:  she 
did  not  stir,  she  seemed  to  suffer, — ^to  have  suffered, — to  be 
dead.  Christophe’s  heart  ached.  He  leaned  over  to  her.  She 
opened  her  eyes  again  and  saw  Chfistophe’s  uneasy  eyes  upon 
her  and  she  smiled  into  them.  It  was  like  a ray  of  sunli^t 
to  him.  He  asked  in  a whisper:  to 

“ Are  you  ill  ? ” ^ 

She  shook  her  head  and  said : 

“ I am  cold.” 

The  two  men  put  their  overcoats  about  her,  wrapped  up 
her  feet,  her  legs,  her  knees,  like  a child  being  tucked  up  in 


283 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


bed.  She  suffered  it  and  thanked  them  with  her  eyes.  A fine, 
cold  rain  was  beginning  to  fall.  They  took  the  oars  and  went 
quietly  home.  Heavy  clouds  hung  in  the  sky.  The  river  was 
inky  black.  Lights  showed  in  the  windows  of  the  houses  here 
and  there  in  the  fields.  When  they  reached  the  mill  the  rain 
was  pouring  down  and  Sabine  was  numbed. 

They  lit  a large  fire  in  the  kitchen  and  waited  until  the  deluge 
should  be  over.  But  it  only  grew  worse,  and  the  wind  rose. 
They  had  to  drive  three  miles  to  get  back  to  the  town.  The 
miller  declared  that  he  would  not  let  Sabine  go  in  such  weather : 
and  he  proposed  that  they  should  both  spend  the  night  in  the 
farmliouse.  Christophe  was  reluctant  to  accept:  he  looked  at 
Sabine  for  counsel : but  her  eyes  were  fixed  on  the  fire  on  the 
hearth : it  was  as  though  they  were  afraid  of  influencing  Chris- 
tophe’s  decision.  But  when  Christophe  had  said  “ Yes,”  she  , 
turned  to  him  and  she  was  blushing — (or  was  it  the  reflection  , 
of  the  fire?) — and  he  saw  that  she  was  pleased.  ; 

A jolly  evening.  . . . The  rain  stormed  outside.  In  the  black  , 
chimney  the  fire  darted  jets  of  golden  sparks.  They  spun  round 
and  round.  Their  fantastic  shapes  were  marked  against  the  * 
wall.  The  miller  showed  Sabine’s  little  girl  how  to  make, 
shadows  with  her  hands.  The  child  laughed  and  was  not  alto- 
gether at  her  ease.  Sabine  leaned  over  the  fire  and  poked  it: 
mechanically  with  a heavy  pair  of  tongs : she  was  a little  weary, ; 
and  smiled  dreamily,  while,  without  listening,  she  nodded  to; 
her  sister-in-law’s  chatter  of  her  domestic  affairs.  Christophe  | 
sat  in  the  shadow  by  the  miller’s  side  and  watched  Sabine  smil-: 
ing.  He  knew  that  she  was  smiling  at  him.  They  never  had^ 
an  opportunity  of  being  alone  all  evening,  or  of  looking  at  each| 
other:  they  sought  none. 

They  parted  early.  Their  rooms  were  adjoining,  and  com- 

fnicated  by  a door.  Christophe  examined  the  door  and  found 
t the  lock  was  on  Sabine’s  side.  He  went  to  bed  and  tried 
sleep.  The  rain  was  pattering  against  the  windows.  The 
wind  howled  in  the  chimney.  On  the  floor  above  him  a door 
was  banging.  Outside  the  window  a poplar  bent  and  groaned 
under  the  tempest.  Christophe  could  not  close  his  eyes.  He 
was  thinking  that  he  was  under  the  same  roof,  near  her.  A 


YOUTH 


283 


wall  only  divided  them.  He  heard  no  sound  in  Sabine’s  room. 
But  he  thought  he  could  see  her.  He  sat  up  in  his  bed  and 
called  to  her  in  a low  voice  through  the  wall : tender,  passionate 
words  he  said : he  held  out  his  arms  to  her.  And  it  seemed  to 
him  that  she  was  holding  out  her  arms  to  him.  In  his  heart 
he  heard  the  beloved  voice  answering  him,  repeating  his  words, 
calling  low  to  him : and  he  did  not  know  whether  it  was  he 
who  asked  and  answered  all  the  questions,  or  whether  it  was 
really  she  who  spoke.  The  voice  came  louder,  the  call  to  him: 
he  could  not  resist : he  leaped  from  his  bed : he  groped  his  way 
to  the  door:  he  did  not  wish  to  open  it:  he  was  reassured  by 
the  closed  door.  And  when  he  laid  his  hand  once  more  on  the 
handle  he  found  that  the  door  was  opening.  . . . 

He  stopped  dead.  He  closed  it  softly : he  opened  it  once  more : 
he  closed  it  again.  Was  it  not  closed  just  now?  Yes.  He  was 
sure  it  was.  Who  had  opened  it?  . . . His  heart  beat  so  that 
he  choked.  He  leaned  over  his  bed,  and  sat  down  to  breathe 
again.  He  was  overwhelmed  by  his  passion.  It  robbed  him 
of  the  power  to  see  or  hear  or  move:  his  whole  body  shook. 
He  was  in  terror  of  this  unknown  joy  for  which  for  months 
he  had  been  craving,  which  was  with  him  now,  near  him,  so 
that  nothing  could  keep  it  from  him.  Suddenly  the  violent 
boy  filled  with  love  was  afraid  of  these  desires  newly  realized 
and  revolted  from  them.  He  was  ashamed  of  them,  ashamed 
of  what  he  wished  to  do.  He  was  too  much  in  love  to  dare 
to  enjoy  what  he  loved:  he  was  afraid:  he  would  have  done 
anything  to  escape  his  happiness.  Is  it  only  possible  to  love, 
to  love,  at  the  cost  of  the  profanation  of  the  beloved?  . . . 

He  went  to  the  door  again : and  trembling  with  love  and  fear, 
with  his  hand  on  the  latch  he  could  not  bring  himself  to  open  it. 

And  on  the  other  side  of  the  door,  standing  barefooted  on 
the  tiled  floor,  shivering  with  cold,  was  Sabine. 

So  they  stayed  . . . for  how  long  ? Minutes  ? Hours  ? . . . 
They  did  not  know  that  they  were  there : and  yet  they  did  know. 
They  held  out  their  arms  to  each  other, — he  was  overwhelmed 
by  a love  so  great  that  he  had  not  the  courage  to  enter, — she 
called  to  him,  waited  for  him,  trembled  lest  he  should  enter. 

. . And  when  at  last  he  made  up  his  mind  to  enter,  she  had 
just  made  up  her  mind  to  turn  the  lock  again. 


384 


JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 


Then  he  cursed  himself  for  a fool.  He  leaned  against  the 
door  with  all  his  strength.  With  his  lips  to  the  lock  he  implored 
her; 

“ Open.” 

He  called  to  Sabine  in  a whisper:  she  could  hear  his  heated 
breathing.  She  stayed  motionless  near  the  door : she  was  frozen : 
her  teeth  were  chattering:  she  had  no  strength  either  to  open 
the  door  or  to  go  to  bed  again.  ...  • 

The  storm  made  the  trees  crack  and  the  doors  in  the  house 
bang.  . . . They  turned  away  and  went  to  their  beds,  worn  out, 
sad  and  sick  at  heart.  The  cocks  crowed  huskily.  The  first 
light  of  dawn  crept  through  the  wet  windows,  a wretched,  pale 
dawn,  drowned  in  the  persistent  rain.  . . . 

Christophe  got  up  as  soon  as  he  could:  he  went  down  to  the 
kitchen  and  talked  to  the  people  there.  He  was  in  a hurry  to 
be  gone  and  was  afraid  of  being  left  alone  with  Sabine  again.  •, 
He  was  almost  relieved  when  the  miller’s  wife  said  that  Sabine  : 
was  unwell,  and  had  caught  cold  during  the  drive  and  would  * 
not  be  going  that  morning.  t 

His  journey  home  was  melancholy.  He  refused  to  drive,  * 
and  walked  through  the  soaking  fields,  in  the  yellow  mist  that ' 
covered  the  earth,  the  trees,  the  houses,  with  a shroud.  Like  : 
the  light,  life  seemed  to  be  blotted  out.  Everything  loomed  like 
a specter.  He  was  like  a specter  himself.  I 

i 

At  home  he  found  angry  faces.  They  were  all  scandalized  | 
at  his  having  passed  the  night  God  knows  where  with  Sabine. ; 
He  shut  himself  up  in  his  room  and  applied  himself  to  his| 
work.  Sabine  returned  the  next  day  and  shut  herself  up  also. ! 
They  avoided  meeting  each  other.  The  weather  was  still  wet 
and  cold : neither  of  them  went  out.  They  saw  each  other 
through  their  closed  windows.  Sabine  was  wrapped  up  by 
her  fire,  dreaming.  Christophe  was  buried  in  his  papers.  They 
bowed  to  each  other  a little  coldly  and  reservedly  and  then  pre- 
tended to  be  absorbed  again.  They  did  not  take  stock  of  what 
they  were  fefeling : they  were  angry  with  each  other,  with  them- 
selves, with  things  generally.  The  night  at  the  farmhouse  had 
been  thrust  aside  in  their  memories:  they  were  ashamed  of  it, 
and  did  not  know  whether  they  were  more  ashamed  of  their 


YOUTH 


285 


folly  or  of  not  having  yielded  to  it.  It  was  painful  to  them 
to  see  each  other:  for  that  made  them  remember  things  from 
which  they  wished  to  escape:  and  by  joint  agreement  they 
retired  into  the  depths  of  their  rooms  so  as  utterly  to  forget 
each  other.  But  that  was  impossible,  and  they  suffered  keenly 
under  the  secret  hostility  which  they  felt  was  between  them. 
Christophe  was  haunted  by  the  expression  of  dumb  rancor  which 
he  had  once  seen  in  Sabine^s  cold  eyes.  From  such  thoughts 
her  suffering  was  not  less:  in  vain  did  she  struggle  against 
them,  and  even  deny  them:  she  could  not  rid  herself  of  them. 
They  were  augmented  by  her  shame  that  Christophe  should  have 
guessed  what  was  happening  within  her:  and  the  shame  of 
having  offered  herself  . . . the  shame  of  having  offered  herself 
without  having  given. 

Christophe  gladly  accepted  an  opportunity  which  cropped  up 
to  go  to  Cologne  and  Diisseldorf  for  some  concerts.  He  was 
glad  to  spend  two  or  three  weeks  away  from  home.  Prepara- 
tion for  the  concerts  and  the  composition  of  a new  work  that 
he  wished  to  play  at  them  took  up  all  his  time  and  he  succeeded 
in  forgetting  his  obstinate  memories.  They  disappeared  from 
Sabine’s  mind  too,  and  she  fell  back  into  the  torpor  of  her 
usual  life.  They  came  to  think  of  each  other  with  indifference. 
Had  they  really  loved  each  other?  They  doubted  it.  Chris- 
tophe was  on  the  point  of  leaving  for  Cologne  without  saying 
good-bye  to  Sabine. 

On  the  evening  before  his  departure  they  were  brought  to- 
gether again  by  some  imperceptible  influence.  It  was  one  of 
the  Sunday  afternoons  when  everybody  was  at  church.  Chris- 
tophe had  gone  out  too  to  make  his  final  preparations  for  the 
journey.  Sabine  was  sitting  in  her  tiny  garden  warming  her- 
self in  the  last  rays  of  the  sun.  Christophe  came  home:  he 
was  in  a hurry  and  his  first  inclination  when  he  saw  her  was 
to  bow  and  pass  on.  But  something  held  him  back  as  he  was 
passing:  was  it  Sabine’s  paleness,  or  some  indefinable  feeling: 
remorse,  fear,  tenderness?  ...  He  stopped,  turned  to  Sabine, 
and,  leaning  over  the  fence,  he  bade  her  good-evening.  Without 
replying  she  held  out  her  hand.  Her  smile  was  all  kindness, — 
such  kindness  as  he  had  never  seen  in  her.  Her  gesture  seemed 
to  say : Peace  between  us.  . . He  took  her  hand  over  the 


286 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


fence,  bent  over  it,  and  kissed  it.  She  made,  no  attempt  to 
withdraw  it.  He  longed  to  go  down  on  his  knees  and  say, 

I love  you.”  . . . They  lookfed  at  each  other  in  silence.  But 
they  offered  no  explanation.  After  a moment  she  removed  her 
hand  and  turned  her  head.  He  turned  too  to  hide  his  emotion. 
Then  they  looked  at  each  other  again  with  untroubled  eyes. 
The  sun  was  setting.  Subtle  shades  of  color,  violet,  orange,  and 
mauve,  chased  across  the  cold  clear  sky.  She  shivered  and  drew 
her  shawl  closer  about  her  shoulders  with  a movement  that 
he  knew  well.  He  asked: 

“ How  are  you  ? ” 

She  made  a little  grimace,  as  if  the  question  were  not  worth 
answering.  They  went  on  looking  at  each  other  and  were  happy. 
It  was  as  though  they  had  lost,  and  had  just  found  each  other 
again.  ... 

At  last  he  broke  the  silence  and  said : 

“ I am  going  away  to-morrow.”  , 

There  was  alarm  in  Sabine’s  eyes.  t 

“ Going  away  ? ” she  said.  j 

He  added  quickly:  i 

“ Oh ! only  for  two  or  three  weeks.”  ! 

“ Two  or  three  weeks,”  she  said  in  dismay.  i 

He  explained  that  he  was  engaged  for  the  concerts,  but  that  , 
when  he  came  back  he  would  not  stir  all  winter.  . 

Winter,”  she  said.  “ That  is  a long  time  off.  ...”  • 

“ Oh ! no.  It  will  soon  be  here.”  | 

She  saddened  and  did  not  look  at  him. 

“When  shall  we  meet  again?”  she  asked  a moment  later. | 
He  did  not  understand  the  question:  he  had  already  an-'s 


swered  it.  , .1 

“ As  soon  as  I come  back : in  a fortnight,  or  three  weeks  at 

mosV’ 

She  still  looked  dismayed.  He  tried  to  tease  her : 

“ It  won’t  be  long  for  you,”  he  said.  “ You  will  sleep.” 

Yes/’  said  Sabine. 

She  looked  down,  she  tried  to  smile : but  her  eyes  trembled. 
“ Christophe ! . . .”  she  said  suddenly,  turning  towards  him. 
There  was  a note  of  distress  in  her  voice.  She  seemed  to  say: 
“ Stay ! Don’t  go ! . . .” 


YOUTH 


287 


He  took  her  hand,  looked  at  her,  did  not  understand  the 
importance  she  attached  to  his  fortnight’s  absence:  but  he  was 
only  waiting  for  a word  from  her  to  say: 

“ I will  stay.  . . 

And  just  as  she  was  going  to  speak,  the  front  door  was  opened 
and  Eosa  appeared.  Sabine  withdrew  her  hand  from  Chris- 
tophe’s  and  went  hurriedly  into  her  house.  At  the  door  she 
turned  and  looked  at  him  once  more  and  disappeared. 

Christophe  thought  he  should  see  her  again  in  the  evening. 
But  he  was  watched  by  the  Vogels,  and  followed  everywhere 
by  his  mother:  as  usual,  he  was  behindhand  with  his  prepara- 
tions for  his  journey  and  could  not  find  time  to  leave  the  house 
for  a moment. 

Next  day  he  left  very  early.  As  he  passed  Sabine’s  door  he 
longed  to  go  in,  to  tap  at  the  window : it  hurt  him  to  leave  her 
without  saying  good-bye : for  he  had  been  interrupted  by  Eosa 
before  he  had  had  time  to  do  so.  But  he  thought  she  must  be 
asleep  and  would  be  cross  with  him  if  he  woke  her  up.  And 
then,  what  could  he  say  to  her?  It  was  too  late  now  to  abandon 
his  journey:  and  what  if  she  were  to  ask  him  to  do  so?  . . . He 
did  not  admit  to  himself  that  he  was  not  averse  to  exercising  his 
power  over  her, — if  need  be,  causing  her  a little  pain.  ...  He 
did  not  take  seriously  the  grief  that  his  departure  brought 
Sabine:  and  he  thought  that  his  short  absence  would  increase 
the  tenderness  which,  perhaps,  she  had  for  him. 

He  ran  to  the  station.  In  spite  of  everything  he  was  a little 
remorseful.  But  as  soon  as  the  train  had  started  it  was  all  for- 
gotten. There  was  youth  in  his  heart.  Gaily  he  saluted  the  old 
town  with  its  roofs  and  towers  rosy  under  the  sun:  and  with 
the  carelessness  of  those  who  are  departing  he  said  good-bye 
to  those  whom  he  was  leaving,  and  thought  no  more  of  them. 

The  whole  time  that  he  was  at  Diisseldorf  and  Cologne  Sabine 
never  once  recurred  to  his  mind.  Taken  up  from  morning  till 
night  with  rehearsals  and  concerts,  dinners  and  talk,  busied 
with  a thousand  and  one  new  things  and  the  pride  and  satis- 
faction of  his  success  he  had  no  time  for  recollection.  Once 
only,  on  the  fifth  night  after  he  left  home,  he  woke  suddenly 
after  a dream  and  knew  that  he  had  been  thinking  of  her  in 


288 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


his  sleep  and  that  the  thought  of  her  had  wakened  him  up: 
but  he  could  not  remember  how  he  had  been  thinking  of  her. 
He  was  unhappy  and  feverish.  It  was  not  surprising:  he  had 
been  playing  at  a concert  that  evening,  and  when  he  left  the 
hall  he  had  been  dragged  off  to  a supper  at  which  he  had  drunk 
several  glasses  of  champagne.  He  could  not  sleep  and  got  up. 
He  was  obsessed  by  a musical  idea.  He  pretended  that  it  was 
that  which  had  broken  in  upon  his  sleep  and  he  wrote  it  down. 
As  he  read  through  it  he  was  astonished  to  see  how  sad  it 
was.  There  was  no  sadness  in  him  when  he  wrote:  at  least, 
so  he  thought.  But  he  remembered  that  on  other  occasions 
when  he  had  been  sad  he  had  only  been  able  to  write  joyous 
music,  so  gay  that  it  offended  his  mood.  He  gave  no  more 
thought  to  it.  He  was  used  to  the  surprises  of  his  mind  world 
without  ever  being  able  to  understand  them.  He  went  to  sleep 
at  once,  and  knew  no  more  until  the  next  morning.  | 

He  extended  his  stay  by  three  or  four  days.  It  pleased  him  ? 
to  prolong  it,  knowing  he  could  return  whenever  he  liked:  he  ’ 
was  in  no  hurry  to  go  home.  It  was  only  when  he  was  on  the  y 
way,  in  the  train,  that  the  thought  of  Sabine  came  back  to  him.  * 
He  had  not  written  to  her.  He  was  even  careless  enough  never  ; 
to  have  taken  the  trouble  to  ask  at  the  post-ofBce  for  any  letters  ; 
that  might  have  been  written  to  him.  He  took  a secret  delight  ^ 
in  his  silence:  he  knew  that  at  home  he  was  expected,  that  he  I 
was  loved.  . . . Loved?  She  had  never  told  him  so:  he  had  \ 
never  told  her  so.  No  doubt  they  knew  it  and  had  no  need  to  \ 
tell  it.  And  yet  there  was  nothing  so  precious  as  the  certainty  | 
of  such  an  avow^al.  Why  had  they  waited  so  long  to  make  it  ? i 
WTien  they  had  been  on  the  point  of  speaking  always  something  ‘ 
— some  mischance,  shyness,  embarrassment, — had  hindered  them. 
Why  ? Why  ? How  much  time  they  had  lost ! ...  He  longed 
to  hear  the  dear  words  from  the  lips  of  the  beloved.  He  longed  ^ 
to  say  them  to  her:  he  said  them  aloud  in  the  empty  carriage.  ; 
As  he  neared  the  town  he  was  torn  with  impatience,  a sort  of  : 
agony.  . . . Faster!  Faster!  Oh!  To  think  that  in  an  hour 
he  would  see  her  again!  ...  | 

It  was  half-past  six  in  the  morning  when  he  reached  home. 
Nobody  was  up  yet.  Sabine’s  windows  were  closed.  He  went  ' 


YOUTH 


289 


into  the  yard  on  tiptoe  so  that  she  should  not  hear  him.  He 
chuckled  at  the  thought  of  taking  her  by  surprise.  He  went 
up  to  his  room.  His  mother  was  asleep.  He  washed  and  brushed 
his  hair  without  making  any  noise.  He  was  hungry:  but  he  was 
afraid  of  waking  Louisa  by  rummaging  in  the  pantry.  He 
heard  footsteps  in  the  yard:  he  opened  his  window  softly  and 
saw  Eosa^  first  up  as  usual,  beginning  to  sweep.  He  called  her 
gently.  She  started  in  glad  surprise  when  she  saw  him:  then 
she  looked  solemn.  He  thought  she  was  still  offended  with  him : 
but  for  the  moment  he  was  in  a very  good  temper.  He  went 
down  to  her. 

^^Eosa,  Eosa/^  he  said  gaily,  ^^give  me  something  to  eat  or 
I ^hall  eat  you  ! I am  dying  of  hunger ! 

Eosa  smiled  and  took  him  to  the  kitchen  on  the  ground  floor. 
She  poured  him  out  a bowl  of  milk  and  then  could  not  refrain 
from  plying  him  with  a string  of  questions  about  his  travels 
and  his  concerts.  But  although  he  was  quite  ready  to  answer 
them, — (in  the  happiness  of  his  return  he  was  almost  glad  to 
hear  Eosa^s  chatter  once  more) — Eosa  stopped  suddenly  in  the 
middle  of  her  cross-examination,  her  face  fell,  her  eyes  turned 
away,  and  she  became  sorrowful.  Then  her  chatter  broke  out 
again : but  soon  it  seemed  that  she  thought  it  out  of  place 
and  once  more  she  stopped  short.  And  he  noticed  it  then  and 
said : 

WTiat  is  the  matter,  Eosa  ? Are  you  cross  with  me  ? 

She  shook  her  head  violently  in  denial,  and  turning  to- 
wards him  with  her  usual  suddenness  took  his  arm  with  both 
hands : 

Oh ! Christophe !...’’  she  said. 

He  was  alarmed.  He  let  his  piece  of  bread  fall  from  his 
hands. 

What ! What  is  the  matter  ? he  stammered. 

She  said  again: 

Oh ! Christophe ! . . . Such  an  awful  thing  has  happened ! 

He  thrust  away  from  the  table.  He  stuttered : 

H— here?^^ 

She  pointed  to  the  house  on  the  other  side  of  the  yard. 

He  cried : 

Sabine!’^ 


290 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHB 


/ 


She  wept : j 

“ She  is  dead.” 

Christophe  saw  nothing.  He  got  up : he  almost  fell : he  clung 
to  the  table,  upset  the  things  on  it : he  wished  to  cry  out.  He 
suffered  fearful  agony.  He  turned  sick. 

Eosa  hastened  to  his  side:  she  was  frightened:  she  held  his 
head  and  wept. 

As  sopn  as  he  could  speak  he  said: 

“ It  is  not  true ! ” 

He  knew  that  it  was  true.  But  he  wanted  to  deny  it,  he 
wanted  to  pretend  that  it  could  not  be.  When  he  saw  Eosa’s 
face  wet  with  tears  he  could  doubt  no  more  and  he  sobbed 
aloud. 

Eosa  raised  her  head: 

“ Christophe ! ” she  said.  ^ 

He  hid  his  face  in  his  hands.  She  leaned  towards  him.  ‘ 

“ Christophe ! . . . Mamma  is  coming ! . . .”  j 

Christophe  got  up.  , | 

“ No,  no,”  he  said.  “ She  must  not  see  me.”  i 

She  took  his  hand  and  led  him,  stumbling  and  blinded  by  | 
his  tears,  to  a little  woodshed  which  opened  on  to  the  yard. 
She  closed  the  door.  They  were  in  darkness.  He  sat  on  a ; 
block  of  wood  used  for  chopping  sticks.  She  sat  on  the  fagots.  : 
Sounds  from  without  were  deadened  and  distant.  There  he  | 
could  weep  without  fear  of  being  heard.  He  let  himself  go  | 
and  sobbed  furiously.  Eosa  had  never  seen  him  weep : she  had  | 
even  thought  that  he  could  not  weep:  she  knew  only  her  own 
girlish  tears  and  such  despair  in  a man  filled  her  with  terror  | 
and  pity.  She  was  filled  with  a passionate  love  for  Christophe. 

It  was  an  absolutely  unselfish  love:  an  immense  need  of  sacri-  j 
fice,  a maternal  self-denial,  a hunger  to  suffer  for  him,  to  take  j 
his  sorrow  upon  herself.  She  put  her  arm  round  his  shoulders.  | 
Dear  Christophe,’^  she  said,  do  not  cry ! ” | 

Christophe  turned  from  her. 

I \\^sh,to  die ! ” 

Eosa  clasped  her  hands.  i 

Don’t  say  that,  Christophe ! ” 

I wish  to  die.  I cannot  . . • cannot  live  now.  . . . What 
is  the  good  of  living?”  ; 


YOUTH 


291 


“ Christophe,  dear  Chris tophe ! You  are  not  alone.  You  are 
loved.  ...” 

"What  is  that  to  me?  I love  nothing  now.  It  is  nothing 
to  me  whether  everything  else  live  or  die.  I love  nothing:  I 
loved  only  her.  I loved  only  her ! ” 

He  sobbed  louder  than  ever  with  his  face  buried  in  his  hands. 
Eosa  could  find  nothing  to  say.  The  egoism  of  Christophe’s 
passion  stabbed  her  to  the  heart.  Now  when  she  thought  her- 
self most  near  to  him,  she  felt  more  isolated  and  more  miserable 
than  ever.  Grief  instead  of  bringing  them  together  thrust  them 
only  the  more  widely  apart.  She  wept  bitterly. 

After  some  time,  Christophe  stopped  weeping  and  asked: 

" How  ? . . . How  ? . . .” 

Eosa  understood. 

" She  fell  ill  of  infiuenza  on  the  evening  you  left.  And  she 
was  taken  suddenly.  . . .” 

He  groaned. 

"Dear  God!  ...  Why  did  you  not  write  to  me?” 

She  said: 

" I did  write.  I did  not  know  your  address : you  did  not 
give  us  any.  I went  and  asked  at  the  theater.  Nobody  knew 
it.” 

He  knew  how  timid  she  was,  and  how  much  it  must  have  cost 
her.  He  asked: 

"Did  she  . . . did  she  tell  you  to  do  that?” 

She  shook  her  head : 

" No.  But  I thought  . . .” 

He  thanked  her  with  a look.  Eosa’s  heart  melted. 

" My  poor  . . . poor  Christophe ! ” she  said. 

She  fiung  her  arms  round  his  neck  and  wept.  Christophe 
felt  the  worth  of  such  pure  tenderness.  He  had  so  much  need 
of  consolation!  He  kissed  her: 

" How  kind  you  are,”  he  said.  " You  loved  her  too?  ” 

She  broke  away  from  him,  she  threw  him  a passionate  look, 
did  not  reply,  and  began  to  weep  again. 

That  look  was  a revelation  to  him.  It  meant: 

" It  was  not  she  whom  I loved.  . . .” 

Christophe  saw  at  last  what  he  had  not  known — what  for 
months  he  had  not  wished  to  see.  He  saw  that  she  loved  him. 


893 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


“’Ssh,”  she  said.  “They  are  calling  me.”  They  heard 
Amalia’s  voice. 

Eosa  asked: 

“ Do  you  want  to  go  back  to  your  room  ? ” 

He  said: 

“No.  I could  not  yet : I could  not  bear  to  talk  to  my 
mother.  . . . Later  on.  . . 

She  said: 

“ Stay  here.  I will  come  back  soon.” 

He  stayed  in  the  dark  woodshed  to  which  only  a thread  of 
light  penetrated  through  a small  airhole  filled  with  cobwebs. 
From  the  street  there  came  up  the  cry  of  a hawker,  against  the 
wall  a horse  in  a stable  next  door  was  snorting  and  kicking. 
The  revelation  that  had  just  come  to  Christophe  gave  him  no 
pleasure : but  it  held  his  attention  for  a moment.  It  made  plain 
many  things  that  he  had  not  understood.  A multitude  of  little 
things  that  he  had  disregarded  occurred  to  him  and  were  ex- 
plained. He  was  surprised  to  find  himself  thinking  of  it:  he 
was  ashamed  to  be  turned  aside  even  for  a moment  from  his 
misery.  But  that  misery  was  so  frightful,  so  irrepressible  that 
the  mistrust  of  self-preservation,  stronger  than  his  will,  than 
his  courage,  than  his  love,  forced  him  to  turn  away  from  it, 
seized  on  this  new  idea,  as  the  suicide  drowning  seizes  in  spite 
of  himself  on  the  first  object  which  can  help  him,  not  to  save 
himself,  but  to  keep  himself  for  a moment  longer  above  the 
water.  And  it  was  because  he  was  suffering  that  he  was  able 
to  feel  what  another  was  suffering — suffering  through  him.  He 
understood  the  tears  that  he  had  brought  to  her  eyes.  He  was 
filled  with  pity  for  Eosa.  He  thought  how  cruel  he  had  been 
to  her — ^how  cruel  he  must  still  be.  For  he  did  not  love  her. 
What  good  was  it  for  her  to  love  him  ? Poor  girl ! ...  In  vain 
did  he  tell  himself  that  she  was  good  (she  had  just  proved 
it).  What  was  her  goodness  to  him?  What  was  her  life  to 
him?  . . . 

He  thought: 

“ Why  is  it  not  she  who  is  dead,  and  the  other  who  is  alive  ? ” 

He  thought : 

“ She  is  alive : she  loves  me : she  can  tell  me  that  to-day,  to- 
morrow, all  my  life:  and  the  other,  the  woman  I love,  she  is 


YOUTH 


293 


dead  and  never  told  me  that  she  loved  me:  I never  have  told 
her  that  I loved  her : I shall  never  hear  her  say  it : she  will  never 
know  it.  . . P 

And  suddenly  he  remembered  that  last  evening:  he  remem- 
bered that  they  were  just  going  to  talk  when  Eosa  came  and 
prevented  it.  And  he  hated  Eosa.  ... 

The  door  of  the  woodshed  was  opened.  Eosa  called  Chris- 
tophe  softly,  and  groped  towards  him.  She  took  his  hand.  He 
felt  an  aversion  in  her  near  presence:  in  vain  did  he  reproach 
himself  for  it : it  was  stronger  than  himself. 

Eosa  was  silent : her  great  pity  had  taught  her  silence.  Chris- 
tophe  was  grateful  to  her  for  not  breaking  in  upon  his  grief 
with  useless  words.  And  yet  he  wished  to  know  . . . she  was 
the  only  creature  who  could  talk  to  him  of  her.  He  asked  in 
a whisper: 

When  did  she  . . 

(He  dared  not  say:  die.) 

She  replied: 

^^Last  Saturday  week.^^ 

Dimly  he  remembered.  He  said : 

^^At  night 

Eosa  looked  at  him  in  astonishment  and  said: 

> Yes.  At  night.  Between  two  and  three.^^ 

The  sorrowful  melody  came  back  to  him.  He  asked,  trem- 
bling : 

Did  she  suffer  much  ? 

^^No,  no.  God  be  thanked,  dear  Christophe:  she  hardly  suf- 
fered at  all.  She  was  so  weak.  She  did  not  struggle  against 
it.  Suddenly  they  saw  that  She  was  lost.  . . 

And  she  . . . did  she  know  it  ? 

I donT  know.  I think  . . 

^^Did  she  say  anything?” 

No.  Nothing.  She  was  sorry  for  herself  like  a child.” 

You  were  there  ? ” 

^^Yes.  For  the  first  two  days  I was  there  alone,  before  her 
brother  came.” 

He  pressed  her  hand  in  gratitude. 

Thank  you.” 

She  felt  the  bipod  rush  to  her  heart. 


294  JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 

After  a silence  he  said,  he  murmured  the  question  which  was  j 
choking  him: 

“ Did  she  say  anything  ...  for  me  ? ” 

Eosa  shook  her  head  sadly.  She  would  have  given  much  to 
be  able  to  let  him  have  the  answer  he  expected : she  was  almost 
sorry  that  she  could  not  lie  about  it.  She  tried  to  console 
him: 

“ She  was  not  conscious.” 

“But  she  did  speak?”  : 

“ One  could  not  make  out  what  she  said.  It  was  in  a very  , 

low  voice.” 

“ Where  is  the  child?  ” | 

“Her  brother  took  her  away  with  him  to  the  country.”  ( 

“ And  she  f ” | 

“ She  is  there  too.  She  was  taken  away  last  Monday  week.”  | 

They  began  to  weep  again.  | 

Frau  Vogel’s  voice  called  Eosa  once  more.  Christophe,  left  i 

alone  again,  lived  through  those  days  of  death.  A week,  already 
a week  ago.  ...  0 God!  What  had  become  of  her?  How  i 
it  had  rained  that  week ! . . . And  all  that  time  he  was  laugh-  * 
ing,  he  was  happy!  :! 

In  his  pocket  he  felt  a little  parcel  wrapped  up  in  soft  paper : | 

they  were  silver  buckles  that  he  had  brought  her  for  her  shoes.  * 
He  remembered  the  evening  when  he  had  placed  his  hand  on  ^ 
the  little  stockinged  foot.  Her  little  feet : where  were  they  ( 
now?  How  cold  they  must  be!  . . . He  thought  the  memory  | 
of  that  warm  contact  was  the  only  one  that  he  had  of  the  ^ 
beloved  creature.  He  had  never  dared  to  touch  her,  to  take  her  1 
in  his  arms,  to  hold  her  to  his  breast.  She  was  gone  forever, 
and  he  had  never  known  her.  He  knew  nothing  of  her,  neither  i 
soul  nor  body.  He  had  no  memory  of  her  body,  of  her  life,  of  | 
her  love.  . '.  . Her  love  ? . . . What  proof  had  he  of  that  ? . . . | 

He  had  not  even  a letter,  a token, — nothing.  Where  could  he  i 
seek  to  hold  her,  in  himself,  or  outside  himself?  . . . Oh!  j 
Nothing!  There  was  nothing  left  him  but  the  love  he  had  for  : 
her,  nothing  left  him  but  himself. — And  in  spite  of  all,  his  ] 
desperate  desire  to  snatch  her  from  destruction,  his  need  of 
denying  death,  made  him  cling  to  the  last  piece  of  wreckage, 
in  an  act  of  blind  faith : 


YOUTH 


295 


. . he  son  gia  morto:  e hen  c'albergo  cangi  resto  in  te 
vivo,  C'or  mi  vedi  e piangi,  se  Vun  nelV  altro  amante  si  tras- 
forma'' 

. I am  not  dead:  I have  changed  my  dwelling.  I live 
still  in  thee  who  art  faithful  to  me.  The  soul  of  the  beloved 
is  merged  in  the  soul  of  the  lover.’^ 

He  had  never  read  these  sublime  words:  but  they  were  in 
him.  Each  one  of  us  in  turn  climbs  the  Calvary  of  the  age. 
Each  one  of  us  finds  anew  the  agony,  each  one  of  us  finds  anew 
the  desperate  hope  and  folly  of  the  ages.  Each  one  of  us  follows 
in  the  footsteps  of  those  who  were,  of  those  before  us  who 
struggled  with  death,  denied  death — and  are  dead. 

He  shut  himself  up  in  his  room.  His  shutters  were  closed 
all  day  so  as  not  to  see  the  windows  of  the  house  opposite.  He 
avoided  the  Vogels:  they  were  odious  to  his  sight.  He  had 
nothing  to  reproach  them  with:  they  were  too  honest,  and  too 
pious  not  to  have  thrust  back  their  feelings  in  the  face  of  death. 
They  knew  Christophers  grief  and  respected  it,  whatever  they 
might  think  of  it : they  never  uttered  Sabine’s  name  in  his  pres- 
ence. But  they  had  been  her  enemies  when  she  was  alive : that 
was  enough  to  make  him  their  enemy  now  that  she  was  dead. 

Besides  they  had  not  altered  their  noisy  habits:  and  in  spite 
of  the  sincere  though  passing  pity  that  they  had  felt,  it  was 
obvious  that  at  bottom  they  were  untouched  by  the  misfortune — 
(it  was  too  natural) — perhaps  even  they  were  secretly  relieved 
by  it  Christophe  imagined  so  at  least.  Now  that  the  Vogels’ 
intentions  with  regard  to  himself  were  made  plain  he  exag- 
gerated them  in  his  own  mind.  In  reality  they  attached  little 
importance  to  him : he  set  too  great  store  by  himself.  But 
he  had  no  doubt  that  the  death  of  Sabine,  by  removing  the 
greatest  obstacle  in  the  way  of  his  landlords’  plans,  did  seem  to 
them  to  leave  the  field  clear  for  Eosa.  So  he  detested  her.  That 
they — (the  Vogels,  Louisa,  and  even  Eosa) — should  have  tacitly 
disposed  of  him,  without  consulting  him,  was  enough  in  any 
case  to  make  him  lose  all  affection  for  the  person  whom  he  was 
destined  to  love.  He  shied  whenever  he  thought  an  attempt  was 
made  upon  his  umbrageous  sense  of  liberty.  But  now  it  was 


296 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


not  only  a question  of  himself.  The  rights  which  these  others 
had  assumed  over  him  did  not  only  infringe  upon  his  own  rights 
but  upon  those  of  the  dead  woman  to  whom  his  heart  was  given. 

So  he  defended  them  doggedly,  although  no  one  was  for  attack- 
ing them.  He  suspected  Eosa’s  goodness.  She  suffered  in  see- 
ing him  suffer  and  would  often  come  and  knock  at  his  door  to 
console  him  and  talk  to  him  about  the  other.  He  did  not  drive 
her  away:  he  needed  to  talk  of  Sabine  with  some  one  who  had 
known  her:  he  wanted  to  know  the  smallest  of  what  had  hap- 
pened during  her  illness.  But  he  was  not  grateful  to  Eosa : he 
attributed  ulterior  motives  to  her.  Was  it  not  plain  that  her 
family,  even  Amalia,  permitted  these  visits  and  long  colloquies 
which  she  would  never  have  allowed  if  they  had  not  fallen  in 
with  her  wishes  ? Was  not  Eosa  in  league  with  her  family  ? He 
could  not  believe  that  her  pity  was  absolutely  sincere  and  free 
of  personal  thoughts. 

And,  no  doubt,  it  was  not.  Eosa  pitied  Christophe  with  all  j 
her  heart.  She  tried  hard  to  see  Sabine  through  Christophers 
eyes,  and  through  him  to  love  her:  she  was  angry  with  herself  t 
for  all  the  unkind  feelings  that  she  had  ever  had  towards  her,  | 
and  asked  her  pardon  in  her  prayers  at  night.  But  could  she 
forget  that  she  was  alive,  that  she  was  seeing  Christophe  every  : 
moment  of  the  day,  that  she  loved  him,  that  she  was  no  longer  ^ 

afraid  of  the  other,  that  the  other  was  gone,  that  her  memory  | 

would  also  fade  away  in  its  turn,  that  she  was  left  alone,  that  ( 

one  day  perhaps  . . .?  In  the  midst  of  her  sorrow,  and  the  1 

sorrow  of  her  friend  more  hers  than  her  own,  could  she  repress  { 
a glad  impulse,  an  unreasoning  hope?  For  that  too  she  was  1 
angry  Vith  herself.  It  was  only  a flash.  It  was  enough.  He 
3aw  it.  He  threw  her  a glance  which  froze  her  heart : she  read 
in  it  hateful  thoughts:  he  hated  her  for  being  alive  while  the 
other  was  dead. 

The  miller  brought  his  cart  for  Sabine^s  little  furniture. 
Coming  back  from  a lesson  Christophe  saw  heaped  up  before 
the  door  in  the  street  the  bed,  the  cupboard,  the  mattress,  the  i 
linen,  all  that  she  had  possessed,  all  that  was  left  of  her.  It  i 
was  a dreadful  sight  to  him.  He  rushed  past  it.  In  the  door- 
way he  bumped  into  Bertold,  who  stopped  him. 

Ah ! my  dear  sir,’^  he  said,  shaking  his  hand  effusively. 


YOUTH 


297 


^^Ah!  who  would  have  thought  it  when  we  were  together? 
How  happy  we  were!  And  yet  it  was  because  of  that  day, 
because  of  that  cursed  row  on  the  water,  that  she  fell  ill.  Oh ! 
well.  It  is  no  use  complaining!  She  is  dead.  It  will  be  our 
turn  next.  That  is  life.  . . . And  how  are  you?  I’m  very  well, 
thank  God ! ” 

He  was  red  in  the  face,  sweating,  and  smelled  of  wine.  The 
idea  that  he  was  her  brother,  that  he  had  rights  in  her  memory, 
hurt  Christophe.  It  offended  him  to  hear  this  man  talking 
of  his  beloved.  The  miller  on  the  contrary  was  glad  to  find 
a friend  with  whom  he  could  talk  of  Sabine:  he  did  not  under- 
stand Christophe’s  coldness.  He  had  no  idea  of  all  the  sorrow 
that  his  presence,  the  sudden  calling  to  mind  of  the  day  at 
his  farm,  the  happy  memories  that  he  recalled  so  blunderingly, 
the  poor  relics  of  Sabine,  heaped  upon  the  ground,  which  he 
kicked  as  he  talked,  set  stirring  in  Christophe’s  soul.  He  made 
some  excuse  for  stopping  Bertold’s  tongue.  He  went  up  the 
steps:  but  the  other  clung  to  him,  stopped  him,  and  went  on 
with  his  harangue.  At  last  when  the  miller  took  to  telling  him 
of  Sabine’s  illness,  with  that  strange  pleasure  which  certain 
people,  and  especially  the  common  people,  take  in  talking  of 
illness,  with  a plethora  of  painful  details,  Christophe  could 
bear  it  no  longer — (he  took  a tight  hold  of  himself  so  as  not 
to  cry  out  in  his  sorrow).  He  cut  him  short: 

Pardon,”  he  said  curtly  and  icily.  I must  leave  you.” 

He  left  him  without  another  word. 

His  insensibility  revolted  the  miller.  He  had  guessed  the 
secret  affection  of  his  sister  and  Christophe.  And  that  Chris- 
tophe should  now  show  such  indifference  seemed  monstrous  to 
him : he  thought  he  had  no  heart. 

Christophe  had  fled  to  his  room:  he  was  choking.  Until  the 
removal  was  over  he  never  left  his  room.  He  vowed  that  he 
would  never  look  out  of  the  window,  but  he  could  not  help  doing 
so:  and  hiding  in  a corner  behind  the  curtain  he  followed  the 
departure  of  the  goods  and  chattels  of  the  beloved  eagerly  and 
with  profound  sorrow.  When  he  saw  them  disappearing  for- 
ever he  all  but  ran  down  to  the  street  to  cry : No ! no ! Leave 
them  to  me ! Do  not  take  them  from  me ! ” He  longed  to 
beg  at  least  for  some  little  thing,  only  one  little  thing,  so  that 


298 


JEAN-CHKISTOPHE 


she  should  not  be  altogether  taken  from  him.  But  how  could 
he  ask  such  a thing  of  the  miller?  It  was  nothing  to  him. 
She  herself  had  not  known  his  love:  how  dared  he  then  reveal 
it  to  another?  And  besides,  if  he  had  tried  to  say  a word  he 
would  have  burst  out  crying.  ...  No.  No.  He  had  to  say 
nothing,  to  watch  all  go,  without  being  able— without  daring  to 
save  one  fragment  from  the  wreck.  ... 

And  when  it  was  all  over,  when  the  house  was  empty,  when 
the  yard  gate  was  closed  after  the  miller,  when  the  wheels  of 
his  cart  moved  on,  shaking  the  windows,  when  they  were  out 
of  hearing,  he  threw  himself  on  the  floor — not  a tear  left  in 
him,  not  a thought  of  suffering,  of  struggling,  frozen,  and  like 
one  dead. 

There  was  a knock  at  the  door.  He  did  not  move.  Another 
knock.  He  had  forgotten  to  lock  the  door.  Rosa  came  in.  She 
cried  out  on  seeing  him  stretched  on  the  floor  and  stopped  in 
terror.  He  raised  his  head  angrily:  ■ 

“ What  ? What  do  you  want  ? Leave  me ! ” 

She  did  not  go:  she  stayed,  hesitating,  leaning  against  the  , 
door,  and  said  again:  ' 

“ Christophe.  . . .” 

He  got  up  in  silence:  he  was  ashamed  of  having  been  seen  ; 
60.  He  dusted  himself  with  his  hand  and  asked  harshly:  ^ 

“ Well.  What  do  you  want  ? ” i 

Rosa  said  shyly : ( 

“ Forgive  me  . . . Christophe  ...  I came  in  ...  I was  | 
bringing  you  ...”  i 

He  saw  that  she  had  something  in  her  hand.  i 

“ See,”  she  said,  holding  it  out  to  him.  “ I asked  Bertold  ' 
to  give  me  a little  token  of  her.  I thought  you  would  like 
it.  ...” 

It  was  a little  silver  mirror,  the  pocket  mirror  in  which  she  i 
used  to  look  at  herself  for  hours,  not  so  much  from  coquetry  | 
as  from  want  of  occupation.  Christophe  took  it,  took  also  the  ,| 
hand  which  held  it.  | 

“ Oh ! Rosa ! . . .”  he  said. 

He  was  filled  with  her  kindness  and  the  knowledge  of  his  | 
own  injustice.  On  a passionate  impulse  he  knelt  to  her  and  15 
kissed  her  hand.  I 


YOUTH 


299 


Forgive  . . . Forgive  . . P he  said. 

Eosa  did  not  understand  at  first:  then  she  understood  only 
too  well:  she  blushed,  she  trembled,  she  began  to  weep.  She 
understood  that  he  meant: 

'^Forgive  me  if  I am  unjust.  : . . Forgive  me  if  I do  not 
love  you.  . . . Forgive  me  if  I cannot  ...  if  I cannot  love 
you,  if  I can  never  love  you!  . . 

She  did  not  withdraw  her  hand  from  him:  she  knew  that 
it  was  not  herself  that  he  was  kissing.  And  with  his  cheek 
against  Eosa's  hand,  he  wept  hot  tears,  knowing  that  she  was 
reading  through  him : there  was  sorrow  and  bitterness  in  being 
unable  to  love  her  and  making  her  suffer. 

They  stayed  so,  both  weeping,  in  the  dim  light  of  the  room. 

At  last  she  withdrew  her  hand.  He  went  on  murmuring: 

Forgive!  . . 

She  laid  her  hand  gently  on  his  hand.  He  rose  to  his  feet. 
They  kissed  in  silence:  they  felt  on  their  lips  the  bitter  savor 
of  their  tears. 

We  shall  always  be  friends,’^  he  said  softly.  She  bowed  her 
head  and  left  him,  too  sad  to  speak. 

They  thought  that  the  world  is  ill  made.  The  lover  is  un- 
loved. The  beloved  does  not  love.  The  lover  who  is  loved  is 
sooner  or  later  torn  from  his  love.  . . . There  is  suffering. 
There  is  the  bringing  of  suffering.  And  the  most  wretched 
is  not  always  the  one  who  suffers. 

Once  more  Christophe  took  to  avoiding  the  house.  He  could 
not  bear  it.  He  could  not  bear  to  see  the  curtainless  windows, 
the  empty  rooms. 

A worse  sorrow  awaited  him.  Old  Euler  lost  no  time  in 
reletting  the  ground  fioor.  One  day  Christophe  saw  strange 
faces  in  Sabine^s  room.  New  lives  blotted  out  the  traces  of  the 
life  that  was  gone.  , 

It  became  impossible  for  him  to  stay  in  his  rooms.  He  passed 
whole  days  outside,  not  coming  back  until  nig)itfall,  when  it 
was  too  dark  to  see  anything.  Once  more  he  took  to  making 
expeditions  in  the  country.  Irresistibly  he  was  drawn  to  Ber- 
told^s  farm.  But  he  never  went  in,  dared  not  go  near  it,  wan- 
dered about  it  at  a distance.  He  discovered  a place  on  a hill 


.300 


JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 


from  which  he  could  see  the  house,  the  plain,  the  river:  it  was 
thither  that  his  steps  usually  turned.  From  thence  he  could 
follow  with  his  eyes  the  meanderings  of  the  water  down  to  the 
willow  clump  under  which  he  had  seen  the  shadow  of  death  pass 
across  Sabine’s  face.  From  thence  he  could  pick  out  the  two 
windows  of  the  rooms  in  which  they  had  waited,  side  by  side, 
so  near,  so  far,  separated  by  a door — the  door  to  eternity.  From 
thence  he  could  survey  the  cemetery.  He  had  never  been  able 
to  bring  himself  to  enter  it£  from  childhood  he  had  had  a horror 
of  those  fields  of  decay  G3(rwrruption,  and  refused  to  think  of 
those  whom  he  loved  in  connection  with  themj)  But  from  a 
distance  and  seen  from  above,  the  little  graveyard  never  looked 
grim,  it  was  calm,  it  slept  with  the  sun.  ...  Sleep!  . . . She 
loved  to  sleep ! Nothing  would  disturb  her  there.  The  crowing  , 
cocks  answered  each  other  across  the  plains.  From  the  home- 
stead rose  the  roaring  of  the  mill,  the  clucking  of  the  poultry.^  1 
yard,  the  cries  of  children  playing.  He  could  make  out  Sabine’s  -S] 
little  girl,  he  could  see  her  running,  he  could  mark  her  laughter,  i 
Once  he  lay  in  wait  for  her  near  the  gate  of  the  farmyard,  in  a ! 
turn  of  the  sunk  road  made  by  the  walls:  he  seized  her  as  , 
she  passed  and  kissed  her.  The  child  was  afraid  and  began  • 
to  cry.  She  had  almost  forgotten  him  already.  He  asked  ' 
her : i 

“ Are  you  happy  here  ? ” | 

« Yes.  It  is  fun.  . . .”  | 

“You  don’t  want  to  come  back?”  I 


“No!” 

He  let  her  go.  The  child’s  indifference  plunged  him  in  sorrow. 
Poor  Sabine!  . . . And  yet  it  was  she,  something  of  her.  . . . 
So  little!  The  child  was  hardly  at  all  like  her  mother:  had 
lived  in  her,  but  was  not  she : in  that  mysterious  passage  through 
her  being  the  child  had  hardly  retained  more  than  the  faintest 
perfume  of  the  creature  who  was  gone : inflections  of  her  voice, 
a pursing  of  the  lips,  a trick  of  bending  the  head.  The  rest 
of  her  was  another  being  altogether:  and  that  being  mingled 
with  the  being  of  Sabine  was  repulsive  to  Christophe  though 
he  never  admitted  it  to  himself. 

It  was  only  in  himself  that  Christophe  could  find  the  image 
•of  Sabine.  It  followed  him  everywhere,  hovering  above  him: 


1 

s 

I 

I 


YOUTH 


301 


but  he  only  felt  himself  really  to  be  with  her  when  he  was^^ 
alone.  Nowhere  was  she  nearer  to  him  than  in  this  refuge, 
on  the  hill,  far  from  strange  eyes,  in  the  midst  of  the  country 
that  was  so  full  of  the  memory  of  her.  He  would  go  miles  to  it,, 
climbing  at  a run,  his  heart  beating  as  though  he  were  going  to 
a meeting  with  her:  and  so  it  was  indeed.  When  he  reached 
it  he  would  lie  on  the  ground — the  same  earth  in  which  her 
body  was  laid : he  would  close  his  eyes : and  she  would  come  to 
him.  He  could  not  see  her  face:  he  could  not  hear  her  voice: 
he  had  no  need:  she  entered  into  him,  held  him,  he  possessed 
her  utterly.  In  this  state  of  passionate  hallucination  he  would 
lose  the  power  of  thought,  he  would  be  unconscious  of  what 
was  happening:  he  was  unconscious  of  everything  save  that  he 
was  with  her. 

That  state  of  things  did  not  last  long. — To  tell  the  truth 
he  was  only  once  altogether  sincere.  From  the  day  following, 
his  will  had  its  share  in  the  proceedings.  And  from  that  time 
on  Christophe  tried  in  vain  to  bring  it  back  to  life.  It  was 
only  then  that  he  thought  of  evoking  in  himself  the  face  and 
form  of  Sabine:  until  then  he  had  never  thought  of  it.  He 
succeeded  spasmodically  and  he  was  fired  by  it.  But  it  was  only 
at  the  cost  of  hours  of  waiting  and  of  darkness. 

Poor  Sabine ! he  would  think.  They  have  all  forgotten 
you.  There  is  only  I who  love  you,  who  keep  your  memory 
alive  forever.  Oh,  my  treasure,  my  precious!  I have  you,  I 
hold  you,  I will  never  let  you  go!  . . 

He  spoke  these  words  because  already  she  was  escaping  him: 
she  was  slipping  from  his  thoughts  like  water  through  his 
fingers.  He  would  return  again  and  again,  faithful  to  the  tryst. 
He  wished  to  think  of  her  and  he  would  close  his  eyes.  But 
after  half  an  hour,  or  an  hour,  or  sometimes  two  hours,  he 
would  begin  to  see  that  he  had  been  thinking  of  nothing.  The 
sounds  of  the  valley,  the  roar  of  the  wind,  the  little  bells  of  the 
two  goats  browsing  on  the  hill,  the  noise  of  the  wind  in  the 
little  slender  trees  under  which  he  lay,  were  sucked  up  by  his 
thoughts  soft  and  porous  like  a sponge.  He  was  angry  with 
his  thoughts : they  tried  to  obey  him,  and  to  fix  the  vanished 
image  to  which  he  was  striving  to  attach  his  life:  but  his 
thoughts  fell  back  weary  and  chastened  and  once  more  with  a 


303 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


sigh  of  comfort  abandoned  themselves  to  the  listless  stream  of 
sensations. 

He  shook  off  his  torpor.  He  strode  through  the  country 
hither  and  thither  seeking  Sabine,  He  sought  her  in  the  mirror 
that  once  had  held  her  smile.  He  sought  her  by  the  river  bank 
where  her  hands  had  dipped  in  the  water.  But  the  mirror  and 
the  water  gave  him  only  the  reflection  of  himself.  The  excite- 
ment of  walking,  the  fresh  air,  the  beating  of  his  own  healthy 
blood  awoke  music  in  him  once  more.  He  wished  to  find 
change. 

“ Oh ! Sabine ! . . he  sighed. 

He  dedicated  his  songs  to  her : he  strove  to  call  her  to  life  in 
his  music,  his  love,  and  his  sorrow.  ...  In  vain;  love  and  sor- 
row came  to  life  surely ; but  poor  Sabine  had  no  share  in  them. 
Love  and  sorrow  looked  towards  the  future,  not  towards  the  past.  ^ 
Christophe  was  powerless  against  his  youth.  The  sap  of  hfe/i 
swelled  up  again  in  him  with  new  vigor.  His  grief,  his  regrets,  | 
his  chaste  and  ardent  love,  his  baffled  desires,  heightened  the  | 
fever  that  was  in  him.  In  spite  of  his  sorrow,  his  heart  beat  ’ 
in  lively,  sturdy  rhythm : wild  songs  leaped  forth  in  mad,  in- 
toxicated strains : everything  in  him  hymned  life  and  even  sad- 
ness took  on  a festival  shape.  Christophe  was  too  frank  to 
persist  in  self-deception:  and  he  despised  himself.  But  life 
swept  him  headlong : and  in  his  sadness,  with  death  in  his  heart, 
and  life  in  all  his  limbs,  he  abandoned  himself  to  the  forees 
newborn  in  him,  to  the  absurd.,  delicious  joy  of  living,  which 
grief,  pity,  despair,  the  aching  wound  of  an  irreparable  loss, 
all  the  torment  of  death,  can  only  sharpen  and  kindle  into  being 
in  the  strong,  as  they  rowel  their  sides  with  furious  spur. 

And  Christophe  knew  that,  in  himself,  in  the  secret  hidden 
depths  of  his  soul,  he  had  an  inaccessible  and  inviolable  sanc- 
tuary where  lay  the  shadow  of  Sabine.  That  the  flood  of  life 
could  not  bear  away.  . . . Each  of  us  bears  in  his  soul  as  it 
were  a little  graveyard  of  those  whom  he  has  loved.  They  sleep 
there,  through  the  years,  untroubled.  But  a day  cometh,  ^this 
we  know, — when  the  graves  shall  reopen.  The  dead  issue  from 
the  tomb  and  smile  with  their  pale  lips— loving,  always— on  '' 
the  beloved,  and  the  lover,  in  whose  breast  their  memory  dwells,  ' 
like  the  child  sleeping  in  the  mother’s  womb. 


YOUTH 


303 


III 

ADA 

After  the  wet  summer  the  autumn  was  radiant.  In  the 
orchards  the  trees  were  weighed  down  with  fruit.  The  red 
apples  shone  like  billiard  balls.  Already  some  of  the  trees  were 
taking  on  their  brilliant  garb  of  the  falling  year:  flame  color, 
fruit  color,  color  of  ripe  melon,  of  oranges  and  lemons,  of  good 
cooking,  and  fried  dishes.  Misty  lights  glowed  through  the 
woods:  and  from  the  meadows  there  rose  the  little  pink  flames 
of  the  saffron. 

He  was  going  down  a hill.  It  was  a Sunday  afternoon.  He 
was  striding,  almost  running,  gaining  speed  down  the  slope. 
He  was  singing  a phrase,  the  rhythm  of  which  had  been  ob- 
sessing him  all  through  his  walk.  He  was  red,  disheveled . he 
was  walking,  swinging  his  arms,  and  rolling  his  eyes  like  a 
madman,  when  as  he  turned  a bend  in  the  road  he  came  suddenly 
on  a fair  girl  perched  on  a wall  tugging  with  all  her  might  at 
a branch  of  a tree  from  which  she  was  greedily  plucking  and 
eating  purple  plums.  Their  astonishment'  was  mutual.  She 
looked  at  him,  stared,  with  her  mouth  full.  Then  she  burst 
out  laughing.  So  did  he.  She  was  good  to  see,  with  her  round 
face  framed  in  fair  curly  hair,  which  was  like  a sunlit  cloud 
about  her,  her  full  pink  cheeks,  her  wide  blue  eyes,  her  rather 
large  nose,  impertinently  turned  up,  her  little  red  mouth  show- 
ing white  teeth— the  canine  little,  strong,  and  projecting— her 
plump  chin,  and  her  full  figure,  large  and  plump,  well  built, 
solidly  put  together.  He  called  out: 

“Good  eating!”  And  was  for  going  on  his  road.  But  she 
called  to  him : 

“ Sir ! Sir  I Will  you  be  very  nice  ? Help  me  to  get  down. 
I can’t  ...” 

He  returned  and  asked  her  how  she  had  climbed  up. 

“With  my  hands  and  feet.  ...  It  is  easy  enough  to  get 

up.  ...” 

“ Especially  when  there  are  tempting  plums  hanging  above 
your  head.  ...” 


/ 


304 


JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 


"Yes.  . . . But  when  you  have  eaten  your  courage  goes. 
You  canH  find  the  way  to  get  down.” 

He  looked  at  her  on  her  perch.  He  said: 

" You  are  all  right  there.  Stay  there  quietly.  1^11  come  and 
see  you  to-morrow.  Good-night ! ” 

But  he  did  not  budge,  and  stood  beneath  her.  She  pretended 
to  be  afraid,  and  begged  him  with  little  glances  not  to  leave 
her.  They  stayed  looking  at  each  other  and  laughing.  She 
showed  him  the  branch  to  which  she  was  clinging  and  asked : 

" Would  you  like  some  ? ” 

Respect  for  property  had  not  developed  in  Christophe  since 
the  days  of  his  expeditions  with  Otto:  he  accepted  without 
hesitation.  She  amused  herself  with  pelting  him  with  plums. 
When  he  had  eaten  she  said: 

"Now!  . . .” 

He  took  a wicked  pleasure  in  keeping  her  waiting.  She  grew  ;| 
impatient  on  her  wall.  At  last  he  said : J 

" Come,  then ! ” and  held  his  hand  up  to  her.  5 

But  just  as  she  was  about  to  jump  down  she  thought  a ^ 
moment.  i 

"Wait!  We  must  make  provision  first!  ” ? 

She  gathered  the  finest  plums  within  reach  and  filled  the  ! 
front  of  her  blouse  with  them.  , 

" Carefully ! DonT  crush  them ! ” ; 

He  felt  almost  inclined  to  do  so.  ^ 

She  lowered  herself  from  the  wall  and  jumped  into  his  arms,  i 
Although  he  was  sturdy  he  bent  under  her  weight  and  all  but  ; 
dragged  her  down.  They  were  of  the  same  height.  Their  | 
faces  came  together.  He  kissed  her  lips,  moist  and  sweet  with  j 
the  juice  of  the  plums : and  she  returned  his  kiss  without  more 
ceremony. 

" Where  are  you  going  ? ” he  asked. 

" I donT  know.” 

" Are  you  out  alone  ? ” 

"No.  I am  with  friends.  But  I have  lost  them.  ...  Hi ! 

Hi ! ” she  called  suddenly  as  loudly  as  she  could. 

No  answer. 

She  did  not  bother  about  it  any  more.  They  began  to  walk, 
at  random,  following  their  noses. 


YOUTH 


305 


"And  you  . . . where  are  you  going?”  said  she. 

" I don’t  know,  either.” 

" Good.  We’ll  go  together.” 

She  took  some  plums  from  her  gaping  blouse  and  began  to 


munch  them. 

“ You’ll  make  yourself  sick,”  he  said. 

" Not  I ! I’ve  been  eating  them  all  day.” 

Through  the  gap  in  her  blouse  he  saw  the  white  of  her 
chemise. 

" They  are  all  warm  now,”  she  said. 

“ Let  me  see ! ” 

She  held  him  one  and  laughed.  He  ate  it.  She  watched 
him  out  of  the  corner  of  her  eye  as  she  sucked  at  the  fruit 
like  a child.  He  did  not  know  how  the  adventure  would  end. 
It  is  probable  that  she  at  least  had  some  suspicion.  She  waited. 

" Hi ! Hi ! ” Voices  in  the  woods. 

" Hi ! Hi ! ” she  answered.  “ Ah ! There  they  are ! ” she 


said  to  Christophe.  "Not  a bad  thing,  either!” 

/ But  oFThe^twntewy^shr^^  that  it  was  rather  a 

I pity.  But  speech  was  not  given  to  woman  for  her  to  say  what 
I she  is  thinking.  . . . Thank  God ! for  there  would  be  an  end  of 

L,,moralitx,5Jl.,G^ft^j.-*-'---''''''''^  . „ 

The  voices  came  near.  Her  friends  were  near  the  road.  She 
leaped  the  ditch,  climbed  the  hedge,  and  hid  behind  the  trees. 
He  watched  her  in  amazement.  She  signed  to  him  imperiously 
to  come  to  her.  He  followed  her.  She  plunged  into  the  depths 
of  the  wood. 

“ Hi  I Hi ! ” she  called  once  more  when  they  had  gone  some 
distance.  “ You  see,  they  must  look  for  me ! ” she  explained 
to  Christophe. 

Her  friends  had  stopped  on  the  road  and  were  listening  for 
her  voice  to  mark  where  it  came  from.  They  answered  her 
and  in  their  turn  entered  the  woods.  But  she  did  not  wait  for 
them.  She  turned  about  on  right  and  on  left.  They  bawled 
loudly  after  her.  She  let  them,  and  then  went  and  called  in 
the  opposite  direction.  At  last  they  wearied  of  it,  and,  making 
sure  that  the  best  way  of  making  her  come  was  to  give  up 
seeking  her,  they  called : 

“ Good-bye ! ” and  went  ofE  singing. 


306 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


She  was  furious  that  they  should  not  have  bothered  about 
her  any  more  than  that.  She  had  tried  to  be  rid  of  them : but 
she  had  not  counted  on  their  going  off  so  easily.  Christophe 
looked  rather  foolish:  this  game  of  hide-and»seek  with  a girl 
whom  he  did  not  know  did  not  exactly  enthrall  him:  and  he 
had  no  thought  of  taking  advantage  of  their  solitude.  Nor 
did  she  think  of  it : in  her  annoyance  she  forgot  Chris- 
tophe. 

Oh ! IPs  too  much/^  she  said,  thumping  her  hands  together. 

They  have  left  me.^^ 

But/^  said  Christophe,  you  wanted  them  to.’^ 

Not  at  all.^^ 

^^You  ran  away.’^ 

^^If  I ran  away  from  them  that  is  my  affair,  not  theirs. 
They  ought  to  look  for  me.  What  if  I were  lost?  . . 

Already  she  was  beginning  to  be  sorry  for  herself  because  1 
of  what  might  have  happened  if  ...  if  the  opposite  of  what  ; 
actually  had  occurred  had  come  about. 

Oh ! she  said.  1^11  shake  them ! She  turned  back  and  ^ 
strode  off.  ] 

As  she  went  she  remembered  Christophe  and  looked  at  him 
once  more. — But  it  was  too  late.  She  began  to  laugh.  The 
little  demon  which  had  been  in  her  the  moment  before  was  ; 
gone.  While  she  was  waiting  for  another  to  come  she  saw  • 
Christophe  with  the  eyes  of  indifference.  And  then,  she  was  | 
hungry.  Her  stomach  was  reminding  her  that  it  was  supper-  | 
time : she  was  in  a hurry  to  rejoin  her  friends  at  the  inn.  She  • 
took  Christophers  arm,  leaned  on  it  with  all  her  weight,  groaned,  ] 
and  said  that  she  was  exhausted.  That  did  not  keep  her  from 
dragging  Christophe  down  a slope,  running,  and  shouting,  and 
laughing  like  a mad  thing. 

They  talked.  She  learned  who  he  was : she  did  not  know 
his  name,  and  seemed  not  to  be  greatly  impressed  by  his  title 
of  musician.  He  learned  that  she  was  a shop-girl  from  a dress- 
maker’s in  the  Kaiserstrasse  (the  most  fashionable  street  in  the 
town)  : her  name  was  Adelheid — to  friends,  Ada.  Her  com- 
panions on  the  excursion  were  one  of  her  friends,  who  worked 
at  the  same  place  as  herself,  and  two  nice  young  men,  a clerk 
ut  Weiller’s  bank,  and  a clerk  from  a big  linen-draper’s.  They 


YOUTH 


307 


were  turning  their  Sunday  to  account:  they  had  decided  to 
dine  at  the  Brochet  inn,  from  which  there  is  a fine  view  over 
the  Ehine,  and  then  to  return  by  boat. 

The  others  had  already  established  themselves  at  the  inn 
when  they  arrived.  Ada  made  a scene  with  her  friends:  she 
complained  of  their  cowardly  desertion  and  presented  Chris- 
tophe  as  her  savior.  They  did  not  listen  to  her  complaints: 
but  they  knew  Christophe,  the  bank-clerk  by  reputation,  the 
clerk  from  having  heard  some  of  his  compositions — (he  thought 
it  a good  idea  to  hum  an  air  from  one  of  them  immediately 
afterwards) — and  the  respect  which  they  showed  him  made  an 
impression  on  Ada,  the  more  so  as  Myrrha,  the  other  young 
woman — (her  real  name  was  Hansi  or  Johanna) — a brunette 
with  blinking  eyes,  bumpy  forehead,  hair  screwed  back,  Chinese 
face,  a little  too  animated,  but  clever  and  not  without  charm, 
in  spite  of  her  goat-like  head  and  her  oily  golden-yellow 
complexion, — at  once  began  to  make  advances  to  their  Hof 
Mnsicus.  They  begged  him  to  be  so  good  as  to  honor  their 
repast  with  his  presence. 

Never  had  he  been  in  such  high  feather:  for  he  was  over- 
whelmed with  attentions,  and  the  two  women,  like  good  friends 
as  they  were,  tried  each  to  rob  the  other  of  him.  Both  courted 
him : Myrrha  with  ceremonious  manners,  sly  looks,  as  she  rubbed 
her  leg  against  his  under  the  table — Ada,  openly  making  play 
with  her  fine  eyes,  her  pretty  mouth,  and  all  the  seductive 
resources  at  her  command.  Such  coquetry  in  its  almost  coarse- 
ness incommoded  and  distressed  Christophe.  These  two  bold 
young  women  were  a change  from  the  unkindly  faces  he  was 
accustomed  to  at  home.  Myrrha  interested  him,  he  guessed  her 
to  be  more  intelligent  than  Ada:  but  her  obsequious  manners 
and  her  ambiguous  smile  were  curiously  attractive  and  repulsive 
to  him  at  the  same  time.  She  could  do  nothing  against  Ada’s 
radiance  of  life  and  pleasure:  and  she  was  aware  of  it.  When 
she  saw  that  she  had  lost  the  bout,  she  abandoned  the  effort, 
turned  in  upon  herself,  went  on  smiling,  and  patiently  waited 
for  her  day  to  come.  Ada,  seeing  herself  mistress  of  the  field, 
did  not  seek  to  push  forward  the  advantage  she  had  gained: 
what  she  had  done  had  been  mainly  to  despite  her  friend:  she 
had  succeeded,  she  was  satisfied.  But  she  had  been  caught  in 


308 


JEAN-CHKISTOPHE 


her  own  game.  She  felt  as  she  looked  into  Christophe’s  eyes 
the  passion  that  she  had  kindled  in  him : and  that  same  passion 
began  to  awake  in  her.  She  was  silent:  she  left  her  vulgar 
teasing : they  looked  at  each  other  in  silence : on  their  lips  they 
had  the  savor  of  their  kiss.  From  time  to  time  by  fits  and 
starts  they  joined  vociferously  in  the  jokes  of  the  others:  then 
they  relapsed  into  silence,  stealing  glances  at  each  other.  At 
last  they  did  not  even  look  at  each  other,  as  though  they  were 
afraid  of  betraying  themselves.  Absorbed  in  themselves  they 
brooded  over  their  desire. 

When  the  meal  was  over  they  got  ready  to  go.  They  had 
to  go  a mile  and  a half  through  the  woods  to  reach  the  pier. 
Ada  got  up  first:  Christophe  followed  her.  They  waited  on 
the  steps  until  the  others  were  ready:  without  speaking,  side 
by  side,  in  the  thick  mist  that  was  hardly  at  all  lit  up  by  the  ■: 
single  lamp  hanging  by  the  inn  door. — Myrrha  was  dawdling  . 
by  the  mirror.  j 

Ada  took  Christophe’s  hand  and  led  him  along  the  house  to-  i 
wards  the  garden  into  the  darkness.  Under  a balcony  from 
which  hung  a curtain  of  vines  they  hid.  All  about  them  was  j 
dense  darkness.  They  could  not  even  see  each  other.  The  wind  • 
stirred  the  tops  of  the  pines.  He  felt  Ada’s  warm  fingers  en- 
twined in  his  and  the  sweet  scent  of  a heliotrope  fiower  that 
she  had  at  her  breast.  ; 

Suddenly  she  dragged  him  to  her:  Christophe’s  lips  found  ^ 
Ada’s  hair,  wet  with  the  mist,  and  kissed  her  eyes,  her  eye-  | 
brows,  her  nose,  her  cheeks,  the  corners  of  her  mouth,  seeking 
her  lips,  and  finding  them,  staying  pressed  to  them.  | 

The  others  had  gone.  They  called:  i 

‘^Ada!  . . .” 

They  did  not  stir,  they  hardly  breathed,  pressed  close  to  each  : 
other,  lips  and  bodies. 

They  heard  Myrrha: 

“ They  have  gone  on.” 

The  footsteps  of  their  companions  died  away  in  the  night. 
They  held  each  other  closer,  in  silence,  stifling  on  their  lips  a 
passionate  murmuring. 

In  the  distance  a village  clock  rang  out.  They  broke  apart. 
They  had  to  run  to  the  pier.  Without  a word  they  set  out. 


YOUTH 


309 


arms  and  hands  entwined,  keeping  step — a little  quick,  firm  step, 
like  hers.  The  road  was  deserted:  no  creature  was  abroad: 
they  could  not  see  ten  yards  ahead  of  them:  they  went,  serene 
and  sure,  into  the  beloved  night.  They  never  stumbled  over 
the  pebbles  on  the  road.  As  they  were  late  they  took  a short 
cut.  The  path  led  for  some  way  down  through  vines  and  then 
began  to  ascend  and  wind  up  the  side  of  the  hill.  Through 
the  mist  they  could  hear  the  roar  of  the  river  and  the  heavy 
paddles  of  the  steamer  approaching.  They  left  the  road  and 
ran  across  the  fields.  At  last  they  found  themselves  on  the 
bank  of  the  Ehine  but  still  far  from  the  pier.  Their  serenity 
was  not  disturbed.  Ada  had  forgotten  her  fatigue  of  the  even- 
ing. It  seemed  to  them  that  they  could  have  walked  all  night 
like  that,  on  the  silent  grass,  in  the  hovering  mists,  that  grew 
wetter  and  more  dense  along  the  river  that  was  wrapped  in  a 
whiteness  as  of  the  moon.  The  steamer's  siren  hooted:  the 
invisible  monster  plunged  heavily  away  and  away.  They  said, 
laughing : 

We  will  take  the  next." 

By  the  edge  of  the  river  soft  lapping  waves  broke  at  their 
feet.  At  the  landing  stage  they  were  told : 

The  last  boat  has  just  gone." 

Christophe's  heart  thumped.  Ada's  hand  grasped  his  arm 
more  tightly. 

But,"  she  said,  there  will  be  another  one  to-morrow." 

A few  yards  away  in  a halo  of  mist  was  the  dickering  light 
of  a lamp  hung  on  a post  on  a terrace  by  the  river.  A little 
farther  on  were  a few  lighted  windows — a little  inn. 

They  went  into  the  tiny  garden.  The  sand  ground  under 
their  feet.  They  groped  their  way  to  the  steps.  When  they 
entered,  the  lights  were  being  put  out.  Ada,  on  Christophe's 
arm,  asked  for  a room.  The  room  to  which  they  were  led 
opened  on  to  the  little  garden.  Christophe  leaned  out  of  the 
window  and  saw  the  phosphorescent  flow  of  the  river,  and  the 
shade  of  the  lamp  on  the  glass  of  which  were  crushed  mosquitoes 
with  large  wings.  The  door  was  closed.  Ada  was  standing  by 
the  bed  and  smiling.  He  dared  not  look  at  her.  She  did  not 
look  at  him : but  through  her  lashes  she  followed  Christophe's 
every  movement.  The  floor  creaked  with  every  step.  They 


310 


JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 


could  hear  the  least  noise  in  the  house.  They  sat  on  the  bed 
and  embraced  in  silence. 

The  flickering  light  of  the  garden  is  dead.  All  is  dead.  . . . 

Night.  . . . The  abyss.  . . . Neither  light  nor  consciousness. 

. . . Being.  The  obscure,  devouring  forces  of  Being.  Joy  all- 
powerful.  Joy  rending.  Joy  which  sucks  down  the  human 
creature  as  the  void  a stone.  The  sprout  of  desire  sucking  up 
thought.  The  absurd  delicious  law  of  the  blind  intoxicated 
worlds  which  roll  at  night.  ... 

...  A night  which  is  many  nights,  hours  that  are  centuries, 
records  which  are  death.  . . . Dreams  shared,  words  spoken 
with  eyes  closed,  tears  and  laughter,  the  happiness  of  loving  in 
the  voice,  of  sharing  the  nothingness  of  sleep,  the  swiftly  pass- 
ing images  flouting  in  the  brain,  the  hallucinations  of  the  roar-' 
ing  night.  . . . The  Rhine  laps  in  a little  creek  by  the  house:; 
in  the  distance  his  waters  over  the  dams  and  breakwaters  make: 
a sound  as  of  a gentle  rain  falling  on  sand.  The  hull  of  the 
boat  cracks  and  groans  under  the  weight  of  water.  The  chain, 
by  which  it  is  tied  sags  and  grows  taut  with  a rusty  clattering.' 
The  voice  of  the  river  rises:  it  Alls  the  room.  The  bed  is  like' 
a boat.  They  are  swept  along  side  by  side  by  a giddy  current  : 
hung  in  mid-air  like  a soaring  bird.  The  night  grows  ever  more 
dark,  the  void  more  empty.  Ada  weeps,  Christophe  loses  con- 
sciousness ; both  are  swept  down  under  the  flowing  waters  of  the{ 

night.  ...  I 

Night.  . . . Death.  . . . Why  wake  to  life  again?  ...  ' 

The  light  of  the  dawning  day  peeps  through  the  dripping 
panes.  The  spark  of  life  glows  once  more  in  their  languorous 
bodies.  He  awakes.  Ada’s  eyes  are  looking  at  him.  A whole 
life  passes  in  a few  moments : days  of  sin,  greatness,  and 
peace.  ... 

“ Wliere  am  I ? And  am  I two  ? Do  I still  exist  ? I am  no 
longer  conscious  of  being.  All  about  me  is  the  inflnite : I have 
the  soul  of  a statue,  with  large  tranquil  eyes,  fllled  with  Olym- 
pian peace.  ...” 

They  fall  back  into  the  world  of  sleep.  «And  the  familiar 
sounds  of  the  dawn,  the  distant  bells,  a passing  boat,  oari 
dripping  water,  footsteps  on  the  road,  all  caress  without  dis- 


YOUTH 


311 


turbing  their  happy  sleep,  reminding  them  that  they  are  alive^ 
and  making  them  delight  in  the  savor  of  their  happiness.  . . . 

The  puffing  of  the  steamer  outside  the  window  brought  Chris- 
tophe  from  his  torpor.  They  had  agreed  to  leave  at  seven  so 
as  to  return  to  the  town  in  time  for  their  usual  occupations. 
He  whispered: 

Do  you  hear  ? 

She  did  not  open  her  eyes  ; she  smiled,  she  put  out  her  lips, 
she  tried  to  kiss  him  and  then  let  her  head  fall  back  on  his 
shoulder.  . . . Through  the  window  panes  he  saw  the  funnel 
of  the  steamer  slip  by  against  the  sky,  he  saw  the  empty  deck, 
and  clouds  of  smoke.  Once  more  he  slipped  into  dreami- 
ness. ... 

An  hour  passed  without  his  knowing  it.  He  heard  it  strike 
and  started  in  astonishment. 

Ada ! . . .^’  he  whispered  to  the  girl.  Ada ! he  said 
again.  It’s  eight  o’clock.” 

Her  eyes  were  still  closed:  she  frowned  and  pouted  pettishly. 

Oh ! let  me  sleep ! ” she  said. 

She  sighed  wearily  and  turned  her  back  on  him  and  went  to 
sleep  once  more. 

He  began  to  dream.  His  blood  ran  bravely,  calmly  through 
him.  His  limpid  senses  received  the  smallest  impressions  simply 
and  freshly.  He  rejoiced  in  his  strength  and  youth.  Unwit- 
tingly he  was  proud  of  being  a man.  He  smiled  in  his  happi- 
ness, and  felt  himself  alone : alone  as  he  had  always  been,  more 
lonely  even  but  without  sadness,  in  a divine  solitude.  No  more 
fever.  No  more  shadows.  Nature  could  freely  cast  her  reflec- 
tion upon  his  soul  in  its  serenity.  Lying  on  his  back,  facing 
the  window,  his  eyes  gazing  deep  into  the  dazzling  air  with  its 
luminous  mists,  he  smiled: 

How  good  it  is  to  live ! . . .” 

To  live!  ...  A boat  passed.  . . . The  thought  suddenly  of 
those  who  were  no  longer  alive,  of  a boat  gone  by  on  which 
they  were  together:  he — she.  . . . She?  ...  Not  that  one, 
sleeping  by  his  side. — She,  the  only  she,  the  beloved,  the  poor 
little  woman  who  was  dead. — But  is  it  that  one?  How  came 
she  there?  How  did  they  come  to  this  room?  He  looks  at 


312 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


her,  he  does  not  know  her:  she  is  a stranger  to  him:  yesterday 
morning  she  did  not  exist  for  him.  What  does  he  know  of  her  ? 
— He  knows  that  she  is  not  clever.  He  knows  that  she  is  not 
good.  He  knows  that  she  is  not  even  beautiful  with  her  face 
spiritless  and  bloated  with  sleep,  her  low  forehead,  her  mouth 
open  in  breathing,  her  swollen  dried  lips  pouting  like  a fish. 
He  knows  that  he  does  not  love  her.  And  he  is  filled  with  a 
bitter  sorrow  when  he  thinks  that  he  kissed  those  strange  lips, 
in  the  first  moment  with  her,  that  he  has  taken  this  beautiful 
body  for  which  he  cares  nothing  on  the  first  night  of  their  meet- 
ing,— and  that  she  whom  he  loved,  he  watched  her  live  and  die 
by  his  side  and  never  dared  touch  her  hair  with  his  lips,  that 
he  will  never  know  the  perfume  of  her  being.  Nothing  more. 
All  is  crumbled  away.  The  earth  has  taken  all  from  him.  And 
he  never  defended  what  was  his.  ... 

And  while  he  leaned  over  the  innocent  sleeper  and  scanned  ^ 
her  face,  and  looked  at  her  with  eyes  of  unkindness,  she  felt  : 
his  eyes  upon  her.  Uneasy  under  his  scrutiny  she  made  a great  ! 
effort  to  raise  her  heavy  lids  and  to  smile : and  she  said,  stam-  . 
mering  a little  like  a waking  child : i 

“ Don’t  look  at  me.  I’m  ugly.  . . .”  ! 

She  fell  back  at  once,  weighed  down  with  sleep,  smiled  once  ! 
more,  murmured.  ^ 

Oh ! I’m  so  ...  so  sleepy ! . . .”  and  went  off  again  into  ; 
her  dreams.  * ^ 

He  could  not  help  laughing:  he  kissed  her  childish  lips  more  | 
tenderly.  He  watched  the  girl  sleeping  for  a moment  longer, ; 
and  got  up  quietly.  She  gave  a comfortable  sigh  when  he  was  | 
gone.  He  tried  not  to  wake  her  as  he  dressed,  though  there  was  ■ 
no  danger  of  that : and  when  he  had  done  he  sat  in  the  chair 
near  the  window  and  watched  the  steaming  smoking  river 
which  looked  as  though  it  were  covered  with  ice : and  he  fell  into 
a brown  study  in  which  there  hovered  music,  pastoral,  melan- 
choly. 

From  time  to  time  she  half  opened  her  eyes  and  looked  at 
him  vaguely,  took  a second  or  two,  smiled  at  him,  and  passed 
from  one  sleep  to  another.  She  asked  him  the  time. 

^^A  quarter  to  nine.”  ^ 

Half  asleep  she  pondered:  . :> 


YOUTH 


313 


What ! Can  it  be  a quarter  to  nine  ? 

At  half-past  nine  she  stretched^  sighed,  and  said  that  she  was 
going  to  get  up. 

It  was  ten  o^clock  before  she  stirred.  She  was  petu- 
lant. 

Striking  again ! . . . The  clock  is  fast ! . . /’  He  laughed 
and  went  and  sat  on  the  bed  by  her  side.  She  put  her  arms 
round  his  neck  and  told  him  her  dreams.  He  did  not  listen 
very  attentively  and  interrupted  her  with  little  love  words.  But 
she  made  him  be  silent  and  went  on  very  seriously,  as  though 
she  were  telling  something  of  the  highest  importance : 

She  was  at  dinner : the  Grand  Duke  was  there : Myrrha  was 
a Newfoundland  dog.  ...  No,  a frizzy  sheep  who  waited  at 
table.  . . . Ada  had  discovered  a method  of  rising  from  the 
earth,  of  walking,  dancing,  and  lying  down  in  the  air.  You 
see  it  was  quite  simple:  you  had  only  to  do  . . - thus  . . . 
thus  . . . and  it  was  done.  . . 

Christophe  laughed  at  her.  She  laughed  too,  though  a little 
ruffled  at  his  laughing.  She  shrugged  her  shoulders. 

Ah ! you  donT  understand ! . . .^^ 

They  breakfasted  on  the  bed  from  the  same  cup,  with  the 
same  spoon. 

At  last  she  got  up:  she  threw  off  the  bedclothes  and  slipped 
down  from  the  bed.  Then  she  sat  down  to  recover  her  breath 
and  looked  at  her  feet.  Finally  she  clapped  her  hands  and 
told  him  to  go  out:  and  as  he  was  in  no  hurry  about  it  she 
took  him  by  the  shoulders  and  thrust  him  out  of  the  door  and 
then  locked  it. 

After  she  had  dawdled,  looked  over  and  stretched  each  of 
her  handsome  limbs,  she  sang,  as  she  washed,  a sentimental  Lied 
in  fourteen  couplets,  threw  water  at  Christophers  face — he  was 
outside  drumming  on  the  window — and  as  they  left  she  plucked 
the  last  rose  in  the  garden  and  then  they  took  the  steamer. 
The  mist  was  not  yet  gone:  but  the  sun  shone  through  it: 
they  floated  through  a creamy  light.  Ada  sat  at  the  stern  with 
Christophe:  she  was  sleepy  and  a little  sulky:  she  grumbled 
about  the  light  in  her  eyes,  and  said  that  she  would  have  a 
headache  all  day.  And  as  Christophe  did  not  take  her  com- 
plaints seriously  enough  she  returned  into  morose  silence.  Her 


314 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


eyes  were  hardly  opened  and  in  them  was  the  funny  gravity  of 
children  who  have  just  woke  up.  But  at  the  next  landing-stage 
an  elegant  lady  came  and  sat  not  far  from  her,  and  she  grew 
lively  at  once:  she  talked  eagerly  to  Christophe  about  things 
sentimental  and  distinguished.  She  had  resumed  with  him  the 
ceremonious  Sie. 

Christophe  was  thinking  about  what  she  could  say  to  her 
employer  by  way  of  excuse  for  her  lateness.  She  was  hardly 
at  all  concerned  about  it. 

“ Bah ! It’s  not  the  first  time.” 

“ The  first  time  that  . . . what  ? ” 

“ That  I have  been  late,”  she  said,  put  out  by  the  question. 

He  dared  not  ask  her  what  had  caused  her  lateness. 

“ What  will  you  tell  her  ? ” i 

“ That  my  mother  is  ill,  dead  . . . how  do  I know  ? ” 

He  was  hurt  by  her  talking  so  lightly.  ' 

“I  don’t  want  you  to  lie.”  ; 

She  took  offense:  1 

“ First  of  all,  I never  lie.  . . . And  then,  I cannot  very  well, 

tell  her  . . .”  ' 

He  asked  her  half  in  jest,  half  in  earnest: 

“Why  not?” 

She  laughed,  shrugged,  and  said  that  he  was  coarse  and  ill- 
bred,  and  that  she  had  already  asked  him  not  to  use  the  Dii, 

to  her.  I 

“ Haven’t  I the  right  ? ” | 

“ Certainly  not.”  , < 

“ After  what  has  happened  ? ” j 

“ Nothing  has  happened.” 

She  looked  at  him  a little  defiantly  and  laughed : and  although 
she  was  joking,  he  felt  most  strongly  that  it  would  not  have 
cost  her  much  to  say  it  seriously  and  almost  to  believe  it.  Bu^ 
some  pleasant  memory  tickled  her : for  she  burst  out  laughing 
and  looked  at  Christophe  and  kissed  him  loudly  without  any 
concern  for  the  people  about,  who  did  not  seem  to  be  in  tht 
least  surprised  by  it. 


Now  on  all  his  excursions  he  was  accompanied  by  shop-gir^ 
and  clerks:  he  did  not  like  their  vulgarity,  and  used  to  try  t 


YOUTH 


315 


lose  them : but  Ada  out  of  contrariness  was  no  longer  disposed 
for  wandering  in  the  woods.  When  it  rained  or  for  some  other 
reason  they  did  not  leave  the  town  he  would  take  her  to  the 
theater,  or  the  museum,  or  the  Thiergarten : for  she  insisted 
on  being  seen  with  him.  She  even  wanted  him  to  go  to  church 
with  her;  but  le  was  so  absurdly  sincere  that  he  would  not  set 
foot  inside  a church  since  he  had  lost  his  belief — (on  some  other 
excuse  he  had  resigned  his  position  as  organist) — and  at  the 
same  time,  unknown  to  himself,  remained  much  too  religious 
not  to  think  Ada’s  proposal  sacrilegious. 

He  used  to  go  to  her  rooms  in  the  evening.  Myrrha  would 
be  there,  for  she  lived  in  the  same  house.  Myrrha  was  not  at 
all  resentful  against  him:  she  would  hold  out  her  soft  hand 
caressingly,  and  talk  of  trivial  and  improper  things  and  then 
slip  away  discreetly.  The  two  women  had  never  seemed  to  be 
such  friends  as  since  they  had  had  small  reason  for  being  so: 
they  were  always  together.  Ada  had  no  secrets  from  Myrrha: 
she  told  her  everything:  Myrrha  listened  to  everything:  they 
seemed  to  be  equally  pleased  with  it  all. 

Christophe  was  ill  at  ease  in  the  company  of  the  two  women. 
Their  friendship,  their  strange  conversations,  their  freedom  of 
manner,  the  crude  way  in  which  Myrrha  especially  viewed  and 
spoke  of  things — (not  so  much  in  his  presence,  however,  as 
when  he  was  not  there,  but  Ada  used  to  repeat  her  sayings  to 
him) — ^their  indiscreet  and  impertinent  curiosity,  which  was 
forever  turned  upon  subjects  that  were  silly  or  basely  sensual, 
the  whole  equivocal  and  rather  animal  atmosphere  oppressed 
him  terribly,  though  it  interested  him : for  he  knew  nothing  like 
it.  He  was  at  sea  in  the  conversations  of  the  two  little  beasts, 
who  talked  of  dress,  and  made  silly  jokes,  and  laughed  in  an 
inept  way  with  their  eyes  shining  with  delight  when  they  were 
off  on  the  track  of  some  spicy  story.  He  was  more  at  ease  when 
Myrrha  left  them.  When  the  two  women  were  together  it  was 
like  being  in  a foreign  country  without  knowing  the  language. 
It  was  impossible  to  make  himself  understood:  they  did  not 
even  listen:  they  poked  fun  at  the  foreigner. 

When  he  was  alone  with  Ada  they  went  on  speaking  different 
languages:  but  at  least  they  did  make  some  attempt  to  under- 
stand each  other.  To  tell  the  truth,  the  more  he  understood 


316 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


her,  the  less  he  understood  her.  She  was  the-  first  woman  he 
had  known.  For  if  poor  Sabine  was  a woman  he  had  known, 
he  had  known  nothing  of  her:  she  had  always  remained  for 
him  a phantom  of  his  heart.  Ada  took  upon  herself  to  make 
him  make  up  for  lost  time,  ( in  his'lum"M'tned~toToIveTE^ 
riddle  br'wnTnan  r t^  perhaps  is  no  enigma  except] 

for.those  who  seek  some  meaning  in  it. 

"Xda  war  without  TnTenigencef^^^^  was  the  least  of  her  faults. 
Christophe  would  have  commended  her  for  it,  if  she  had  ap- 
proved it  herself.  But  although  she  was  occupied  only  with 
stupidities,  she  claimed  to  have  some  knowledge  of  the  things 
of  the  spirit:  and  she  judged  everything  with  complete  assur- 
ance. She  would  talk  about  music,  and  explain  to  Christophe 
things  which  he  knew  perfectly,  and  would  pronounce  absolute 
judgment  and  sentence.  It  was  useless  to  try  to  convince  her : ■ 
she  had  pretensions  and  susceptibilities  in  everything ; she  gave ; 
herself  airs,  she  was  obstinate,  vain : she  would  not — she  could  : 
not  understand  anything.  Why  would  she  not  accept  that  she  i 
could  understand  nothing  ? He  loved  her  so  much  -better  when 
she  was  content  with  being  just  what  she  was,  simply,  with  j 
her  own  qualities  and  failings,  instead  of  trying  to  impose: 
on  others  and  herself ! . 

In  fact,  she  was  little  concerned  with  thought.  She  was  con- . 
cerned  with  eating,  drinking,  singing,  dancing,  crying,  laugh-  ^ 
ing,  sleeping : she  wanted  to  be  happy : and  that  would  have  ^ 
been  all  right  if  she  had  succeeded.  But  although  she  had  | 
every  gift  for  it:  she  was  greedy,  lazy,  sensual,  and  frankly^ 
egoistic  in  a way  that  revolted  and  amused  Christophe:  although^ 
she  had  almost  all  the  vices  which  make  life  pleasant  for  their  ^ 
fortunate  possessor,  if  not  for  their  friends  (and  even  then 
does  not  a happy  face,  at  least  if  it  be  pretty,  shed  happiness 
on  all  those  who  come  near  it?) — in  spite  of  so  many  reasons 
for  being  satisfied  with  life  and  herself  Ada  was  not  even  clever 
enough  for  that.  The  pretty,  robust  girl,  fresh,  hearty,  healthy- 
looking,  endowed  with  abundant  spirits  and  fierce  appetites, 
was  anxious  about  her  health.  She  bemoaned  her  weakness, 
while  she  ate  enough  for  four.  She  was  always  sorry  for  her- 
self: she  could  not  drag  herself  along,  she  could  not  breathe, 
she  had  a headache,  feet-ache,  her  eyes  ached,  her  stomach 


YOUTH 


317 


ached,  her  soul  ached.  She  was  afraid  of  everything,  and 
madly  superstitious,  and  saw  omens  everywhere:  at  meals  the 
crossing  of  knives  and  forks,  the  number  of  the  guests,  the 
upsetting  of  a salt-cellar : then  there  must  be  a whole  ritual 
to  turn  aside  misfortune.  Out  walking  she  would  count  the 
crows,  and  never  failed  to  watch  which  side  they  flew  to:  she 
would  anxiously  watch  the  road  at  her  feet,  and  when  a spider 
crossed  her  path  in  the  morning  she  would  cry  out  aloud : then 
she  would  wish  to  go  home  and  there  would  be  no  other  means 
of  not  interrupting  the  walk  than  to  persuade  her  that  it  was 
after  twelve,  and  so  the  omen  was  one  of  hope  rather  than 
of  evil.  She  was  afraid  of  her  dreams : she  would  recount  them 
at  length  to  Christophe;  for  hours  she  would  try  to  recollect 
some  detail  that  she  had  forgotten;  she  never  spared  him  one; 
absurdities  piled  one  on  the  other,  strange  marriages,  deaths, 
dressmakers’  prices,  burlesque,  and  sometimes,  obscene  things. 
He  had  to  listen  to  her  and  give  her  his  advice.  Often  she 
would  be  for  a whole  day  under  the  obsession  of  her  inept 
fancies.  She  would  And  life  ill-ordered,  she  would  see  things 
and  people  rawly  and  overwhelm  Christophe  with  her  jere- 
miads: and  it  seemed  hardly  worth  while  to  have  broken  away 
from  the  gloomy  middle-class  people  with  whom  he  lived  to 
And  once  more  the  eternal  enemy : the  trauriger  ungriechischer 
Hypochondrist/' 

But  suddenly  in  the  midst  of  her  sulks  and  grumblings,  she 
would  become  gay,  noisy,  exaggerated:  there  was  no  more  deal- 
ing with  her  gaiety  than  with  her  moroseness:  she  would  burst 
out  laughing  for  no  reason  and  seem  as  though  she  were  never 
going  to  stop : she  would  rush  across  the  fields,  play  mad  tricks 
and  childish  pranks,  take  a delight  in  doing  silly  things,  in 
mixing  with  the  earth,  and  dirty  things,  and  the  beasts,  and  the 
spiders,  and  worms,  in  teasing  them,  and  hurting  them,  and 
making  them  eat  each  other:  the  cats  eat  the  birds,  the  fowls 
the  worms,  the  ants  the  spiders,  not  from  any  wickedness,  or 
perhaps  from  an  altogether  unconscious  instinct  for  evil,  from 
curiosity,  or  from  having  nothing  better  to  do.  She  seemed  to 
be  driven  always  to  say  stupid  things,  to  repeat  senseless  words 
again  and  again,  to  irritate  Christophe,  to  exasperate  him,  set 
his  nerves  on  edge,  and  make  him  almost  beside  himself.  And 


318 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHB 


her  coquetry  as  soon  as  anybody — no  matter  who— appeared  on ; 
the  road!  . . . Then  she  would  talk  excitedly,  laugh  noisily, 
make  faces,  draw  attention  to  herself:  she  would  assume  an 
affected  mincing  gait.  Christophe  would  have  a horrible  pre- 
sentiment that  she  was  going  to  plunge  into  serious  discussion.— 
And,  indeed,  she  would  do  so.  She  would  become  sentimental, 
uncontrolledly,  just  as  she  did  everything:  she  would  unbosom 
herself  in  a loud  voice.  Christophe  would  suffer  and  long  to 
beat  her.  Least  of  all  could  he  forgive  her  her  lack  of  sin- 
- cerity.  He  did  not  yet  know  that  sincerity  is  a gift  as  rare  as 
I intelligence  or  beauty  and  that  it  cannot  justly  be  expected  of 
1 everybody.  He  could  not  bear  a lie : and  Ada  gave  him  lies 
in  full  measure.  She  was  always  lying,  quite  calmly,  in  spite 
of  evidence  to  the  contrary.  She  had  that  astounding  faculty 
for  forgetting  what  is  displeasing  to  them— or  even  what  has  | 
been  pleasing  to  them— which  those  women  possess  who  live.,^ 

from  moment  to  moment.  i 

And,  in  spite  of  everything,  they  loved  each  other  with  all: 
their  hearts.  Ada  was  as  sincere  as  Christophe  in  her  love.^^ 
Their  love  was  none  the  less  true  for  not  being  based  on  in^ 
tellectual  sympathy : it  had  nothing  in  common  with  base  pas- 
sion. It  was  the  beautiful  love  of  youth : it  was  sensual,  but 
not  vulgar,  because  it  was  altogether  youthful:  it  was  naive, 
almost  chaste,  purged  by  the  ingenuous  ardor  of  pleasure.  Al- 
though Ada  was  not,  by  a long  way,  so  ignorant  as  Christophe. 
yet  siie  had  still  the  divine  privilege  of  youth  of  soul  anq 
body,  that  freshness  of  the  senses,  limpid  and  vivid  as  a runj 
Tiing  stream,  which  almost  gives  the  illusion  of  purity  anc^ 
through  life  is  never  replaced.  Egoistic,  commonplace,  insincere 
in  her  ordinary  life,— love  made  her  simple,  true,  almost  good; 
she  understood  in  love  the  joy  that  is  to  be  found  in  self-forget- 
fulness. Christophe  saw  this  with  delight : and  he  would  gladlj 
have  died  for  her.  Who  can  tell  all  the  absurd  and  touching 
illusions  that  a loving  heart  brings  to  its  love!  And  th( 
natural  illusion  of  the  lover  was  magnified  an  hundredfold  ii 
Christophe  by  the  power  of  illusion  which  is  born  in  the  artist 
Ada’s  smile  held  profound  meanings  for  him:  an  affectionafe 
word  was  the  proof  of  the  goodness  of  her  heart.  He  lovec 
in  her  all  that  is  good  and  beautiful  in  the  universe.  He  callec 


YOUTH  319  ^ 

her  his  own^  his  soul,  his  life.  They  wept  together  over  their 
love. 

Pleasure  was  not  the  only  bond  between  them : there  was  an 
indefinable  poetry  of  memories  and  dreams, — their  own?  or 
those  of  the  men  and  women  who  had  loved  before  them,  who  had 
been  before  them, — in  them?  . . . Without  a word,  perhaps 
without  knowing  it,  they  preserved  the  fascination  of  the  first 
moments  of  their  meeting  in  the  woods,  the  first  days,  the  first 
nights  together : those  hours  of  sleep  in  each  other’s  arms,  still, 
unthinking,  sinking  down  into  a fiood  of  love  and  silent  joy. 
Swift  fancies,  visions,  dumb  thoughts,  titillating,  and  making 
them  go  pale,  and  their  hearts  sink  under  their  desire,  bringing 
all  about  them  a buzzing  as  of  bees.  A fine  light,  and  tender. 

. . . Their  hearts  sink  and  beat  no  more,  borne  down  in  excess 
of  sweetness.  Silence,  languor,  and  fever,  the  mysterious  weary 
smile  of  the  earth  quivering  under  the  first  simlight  of  spring. 
...  So  fresh  a love  in  two  young  creatures  is  like  an  April 
morning.  Like  April  it  must  pass.  Youth  of  the  heart  is  like 
an  early  feast  of  sunshine. 

Nothing  could  have  brought  Christophe  closer  to  Ada  in  his 
love  than  the  way  in  which  he  was  judged  by  others. 

The  day  after  their  first  meeting  it  was  known  all  over  the 
town.  Ada  made  no  attempt  to  cover  up  the  adventure,  and 
rather  plumed  herself  on  her  conquest.  Christophe  would  have 
liked  more  discretion:  but  he  felt  that  the  curiosity  of  the 
people  was  upon  him:  and  as  he  did  not  wish  to  seem  to  fly 
from  it,  he  threw  in  his  lot  with  Ada.  The  little  town  buzzed 
with  tattle.  Christophe’s  colleagues  in  the  orchestra  paid  him 
sly  compliments  to  which  he  did  not  reply,  because  he  would 
not  allow  any  meddling  with  his  affairs.  The  respectable 
people  of  the  town  judged  his  conduct  very  severely.  He  lost 
his  music  lessons  with  certain  families.  With  others,  the  mothers 
thought  that  they  must  now  be  present  at  the  daughters’  lessons, 
watching  with  suspicious  eyes,  as  though  Christophe  were  in- 
tending to  carry  off  the  precious  darlings.  The  young  ladies 
were  supposed  to  know  nothing.  Naturally  they  knew  every- 
thing: and  while  they  were  cold  towards  Christophe  for  his 
lack  of  taste,  they  were  longing  to  have  further  details.  It  was 


330 


JEAX-CHEISTOPHE 


only  among  the  small  tradespeople,  and  the  shop  people,  that 
Christophe  was  popular:  but  not  for  long:  he  was  just  as  an- 
noyed by  their  approval  as  by  the  condemnation  of  the 
rest:  and  being  unable  to  do  anything  against  that  con- 
demnation, he  took  steps  not  to  keep  their  approval:  there 
was  no  difficulty  about  that.  He  was  furious  with  the  general 
indiscretion. 

The  most  indignant  of  all  with  him  were  Justus  Euler  and 
the  Vogels.  They  took  Christophe’s  misconduct  as  a personal 
outrage.  They  had  not  made  any  serious  plans  concerning 
him:  they  distrusted — especially  Frau  Vogel — these  artistic  tern-  i 
peraments.  But  as  they  were  naturally  discontented  and  always 
inclined  to  think  themselves  persecuted  by  fate,  they  persuaded 
themselves  that  they  had  counted  on  the  marriage  of  Christophe 
and  Eosa;  as  soon  as  they  were  quite  certain  that  such  a mar- 
riage would  never  come  to  pass,  they  saw  in  it  the  mark  of  * 
the  usual  ill  luck.  Logically,  if  fate  were  responsible  for  their  j 
miscalculation,  Christophe  could  not  be:  but  the  Vogels’  logic  * 
was  that  which  gave  them  the  greatest  opportunity  for  finding  , 
reasons  for  being  sorry  for  themselves.  So  they  decided  that  if  * 
Christophe  had  misconducted  himself  it  was  not  so  much  for  ; 
his  own  pleasure  as  to  give  offense  to  them.  They  were  scan-  ; 
dalized.  Very  religious,  moral,  and  oozing  domestic  virtue,  they  j 
were  of  those  to  whom  the  sins  of  the  flesh  are  the  most  shame-  ; 
ful,  the  most  serious,  almost  the  only  sins,  because  they  are  | 
the  only  dreadful  sins — (it  is  obvious  that  respectable  people  | 
are  never  likely  to  be  tempted  to  steal  or  murder). — And  so  | 
Christophe  seemed  to  them  absolutely  wicked,  and  they  changed  ( 
their  demeanor  towards  him.  They  were  icy  towards  him  and  I 
turned  away  as  they  passed  him.  Christophe,  who  was  in  no  | 
particular  need  of  their  conversation,  shrugged  his  shoulders  ? 
at  all  the  fuss.  He  pretended  not  to  notice  Amalia’s  insolence : 
who,  while  she  affected  contemptuously  to  avoid  him,  did  all  ; 
that  she  could  to  make  him  fall  in  with  her  so  that  she  might  ; 
tell  him  all  that  was  rankling  in  her. 

Christophe  was  only  touched  by  Eosa’s  attitude.  The  girl 
condemned  him  more  harshly  even  than  his  family.  Not  that 
this  new  love  of  Christophe’s  seemed  to  her  to  destroy  her  last  ^ 
chances  of  being  loved  by  him : she  knew  that  she  had  no  chance  ; 


YOUTH 


left — (although  perhaps  she  went  on  hoping:  she 
hoped). — But  she  had  made  an  idol  of  Christophe:  and  the 
idol  had  crumbled  away.  It  was  the  worst  sorrow  for  her 
yes,  a sorrow  more  cruel  to  the  innocence  and  honesty  of  her 
heart,  than  being  disdained  and  forgotten  by  him.  Brought  up 
puritanically,  with  a narrow  code  of  morality,  in  which  she 
believed  passionately,  what  she  had  heard  about  Christophe 
had  not  only  brought  her  to  despair  but  had  broken  her  heart. 
She  had  suffered  already  when  he  was  in  love  with  Sabine: 
she  had  begun  then  to  lose  some  of  her  illusions  about  her  hero. 
That  Christophe  could  love  so  commonplace  a creature  seemed 
to  her  inexplicable  and  inglorious.  But  at  least  that  love  was 
pure,  and  Sabine  was  not  unworthy  of  it.  And  in  the  end 
death  had  passed  over  it  and  sanctified  it.  . . . But  that  at  once 
Christophe  should  love  another  woman, — and  such  a woman! — 
was  base,  and  odious!  She  took  upon  herself  the  defense  of 
the  dead  woman  against  him.  She  could  not  forgive  him  for 
having  forgotten  her.  . . . Alas!  He  was  thinking  of  her 
more  than  she : but  she  never  thought  that  in  a passionate  heart 
there  might  be  room  for  two  sentiments  at  once:  she  thought 
it  impossible  to  be  faithful  to  the  past  without  sacrifice  of  the 
present.  Pure  and  cold,  she  had  no  idea  of  life  or  of  Christophe : 
everything  in  her  eyes  was  pure,  narrow,  submissive  to  duty, 
like  herself.  Modest  of  soul,  modest  of  herself,  she  had  only 
one  source  of  pride:  purity:  she  demanded  it  of  herself  and  of 
others..  She  could  not  forgive  Christophe  for  having  so  lowered 
himself,  and  she  would  never  forgive  him. 

Christophe  tried  to  talk  to  her,  though  not  to  explain  himself 
— (what  could  he  say  to  her?  what  could  he  say  to  a little 
puritanical  and  naive  girl?). — He  would  have  liked  to  assure 
her  that  he  was  her  friend,  that  he  wished  for  her  esteem,  and 
had  still  the  right  to  it.  He  wished  to  prevent  her  absurdly 
estransfino:  herself  from  him. — But  Eosa  avoided  him  in  stern 


silence : he  felt  that  she  despised  him. 

He  was  both  sorry  and  angry.  He  felt  that  he  did  not  deserve 
such  contempt : and  yet  in  the  end  he  was  bowled  over  by  it : 
and  thought  himself  guilty.  Of  all  the  reproaches  cast  against 
him  the  most  bitter  came  from  himself  when  he  thought  of 
Sabine.  He  tormented  himself. 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


Oh!  God,  how  is  it  possible?  What  sort  of  creature  am 


But  he  could  not  resist  the  stream  that  bore  him  on.  He 
thought  that  life  is  criminal:  and  he  closed  his  eyes  so  as  to 
live  without  seeing  it.  He  had  so  great  a need  to  live,  and  be 
happy,  and  love,  and  believe!  ...  No:  there  was  nothing  des- 
picable in  his  love ! He  knew  that  it  was  impossible  to  be  very 
wise,  or  intelligent,  or  even  very  happy  in  his  love  for  Ada: 
but  what  was  there  in  it  that  could  be  called  vile?  Suppose — 
(he  forced  the  idea  on  himself) — that  Ada  were  not  a woman 
of  any  great  moral  worth,  how  was  the  love  that  he  had  for 
her  the  less  pure  for  that?  Love  is  in  the  lover,  not  in  the 
beloved.  Everything  is  worthy  of  the  lover,  everything  is 
worthy  of  love.  To  the  pure  all  is  pure.  All  is  pure  in  the 
strong  and  the  healthy  of  mind.  Love,  which  adorns  certain 
birds  with  their  loveliest  colors,  calls  forth  from  the  souls  that 
are  true  all  that  is  most  noble  in  them.  The  desire  to  ^how 
to  the  beloved  only  what  is  worthy  makes  the  lover  take  pleasure 
only  in  those  thoughts  and  actions  which  are  in  harmony  with 
the  beautiful  image  fashioned  by  love.  And  the  waters  of  youth 
in  which  the  soul  is  bathed,  the  blessed  radiance  of  strength 
and  joy,  are  beautiful  and  health-giving,  making  the  heart 
great. 

That  his  friends  misunderstood  him  filled  him  with  bitter- 
ness. But  the  worst  trial  of  all  was  that  his  mother  was  begin- 
ning to  be  unhappy  about  it. 

The  good  creature  was  far  from  sharing  the  narrow  views  of 
the  Vogels.  She  had  seen  real  sorrows  too  near  ever  to  try 
to  invent  others.  Humble,  broken  by  life,  having  received  little 
joy  from  it,  and  having  asked  even  less,  resigned  to  every- 
thing that  happened,  without  even  trying  to  understand  it,  she 
was  careful  not  to  judge  or  censure  others:  she  thought  she 
had  no  right.  She  thought  herself  too  stupid  to  pretend  that 
they  were  wrong  when  they  did  not  think  as  she  did : it  would 
have  seemed  ridiculous  to  try  to  impose  on  others  the  inflexible 
rules  of  her  morality  and  belief.  Besides  that,  her  morality 
and'  her  belief  were  purely  instinctive : pious  and  pure  in  her- 
self she  closed  her  eyes  to  the  conduct  of  others,  with  the  in- 
dulgence of  her  class  for  certain  faults  and  certain  weaknesses. 


YOUTH 


That  had  been  one  of  the  complaints  that  her  father-in-law, 
Jean  Michel,  had  lodged  against  her:  she  did  not  sufficiently 
distinguish  between  those  who  were  honorable  and  those  who 
were  not:  she  was  not  afraid  of  stopping  in  the  street  or  the 
market-place  to  shake  hands  and  talk  with  young  women,  no- 
torious in  the  neighborhood,  whom  a respectable  woman  ought 
to  pretend  to  ignore.  She  left  it  to  God  to  distinguish  between 
good  and  evil,  to  punish  or  to  forgive.  From  others  she  asked 
only  a little  of  that  affectionate  sympathy  which  is  so  necessary 
to  soften  the  ways  of  life.  If  people  were  only  kind  she  asked 
no  more. 

But  since  she  had  lived  with  the  Vogels  a change  had  come 
about  in  her.  The  disparaging  temper  of  the  family  had  found 
her  an  easier  prey  because  she  was  crushed  and  had  no  strength 
to  resist.  Amalia  had  taken  her  in  hand:  and  from  morning 
to  night  when  they  were  working  together  alone,  and  Amalia 
did  all  the  talking,  Louisa,  broken  and  passive,  unconsciously 
assumed  the  habit  of  Judging  and  criticising  everything.  Frau 
Vogel  did  not  fail  to  tell  her  what  she  thought  of  Christophers 
conduct.  Louisans  calmness  irritated  her.  She  thought  it  in- 
decent of  Louisa  to  be  so  little  concerned  about  what  put  him 
beyond  the  pale:  she  was  not  satisfied  until  she  had  upset  her 
altogether.  Christophe  saw  it.  Louisa  dared  not  reproach  him: 
but  every  day  she  made  little  timid  remarks,  uneasy,  insistent: 
and  when  he  lost  patience  and  replied  sharply,  she  said  no  more : 
but  still  he  could  see  the  trouble  in  her  eyes : and  when  he  came 
home  sometimes  he  could  see  that  she  had  been  weeping.  He 
knew  his  mother  too  well  not  to  be  absolutely  certain  that  her 
uneasiness  did  not  come  from  herself. — And  he  knew  well  whence 
it  came. 

He  determined  to  make  an  end  of  it.  One  evening  when 
Louisa  was  unable  to  hold  back  her  tears  and  had  got  up  from 
the  table  in  the  middle  of  supper  without  Christophe  being  able 
to  discover  what  was  the  matter,  he  rushed  downstairs  four 
steps  at  a time  and  knocked  at  the  Vogels’  door.  He  was  boiling 
with  rage.  He  was  not  only  angry  about  Frau  Vogel’s  treat- 
ment of  his  mother:  he  had  to  avenge  himself  for  her  having 
turned  Eosa  against  him,  for  her  bickering  against  Sabine,  for 
all  that  he  had  had  to  put  up  with  at  her  hands  for  months.  For 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


months  he  had  borne  his  pent-up  feelings  against  her  and  ; 
now  made  haste  to  let  them  loose. 

He  burst  in  on  Frau  Vogel  and  in  a voice  that  he  tried  to 
keep  calm,  though  it  was  trembling  with  fury,  he  asked  her 
what  she  had  told  his  mother  to  bring  her  to  such  a state. 

Amalia  took  it  very  badly:  she  replied  that  she  would  say  ^ 
what  she  pleased,  and  was  responsible  to  no  one  for  her  actions — 
to  him  least  of  all.  And  seizing  the  opportunity  to  deliver  the 
speech  which  she  had  prepared,  she  added  that  if  Louisa  was 
unhappy  he  had  to  go  no  further  for  the  cause  of  it  than  his 
own  conduct,  which  was  a shame  to  himself  and  a scandal  to 
everybody  else. 

Christophe  was  only  waiting  for  her  onslaught  to  strike  out. 

He  shouted  angrily  that  his  conduct  was  his  own  affair,  that  . 
he  did  not  care  a rap  whether  it  pleased  Frau  Vogel  or  not,  ^ 
that  if  she  wished  to  complain  of  it  she  must  do  so  to  him,  and  i 
that  she  could  say  to  him  whatever  she  liked:  that  rested  with  ; 
her,  but  he  forbade  her — (did  she  hear?) — forbade  her  to  say 
anything  to  his  mother : it  was  cowardly  and  mean  so  to  attack  | 
a poor  sick  old  woman.  , 

‘ ^rau  Vogel  cried  loudly.  Never  had  any  one  dared  to  speak 
to  her  in  such  a manner.  She  said  that  she  was  not  to  be  lectured  ? 
by  a rapscallion, — and  in  her  own  house,  too ! — And  she  treated  : 
him  with  abuse.  ■ 

The  others  came  running  up  on  the  noise  of  the  quarrel, — | 
except  Vogel,  who  fled  from  anything  that  might  upset  his  | 
health.  Old  Euler  was  called  to  witness  by  the  indignant  | 
Amalia  and  sternly  bade  Christophe  in  future  to  refrain  from  j 
speaking  to  or  visiting  them.  He  said  that  they  did  not  need 
him  to  tell  them  what  they  ought  to  do,  that  they  did  their 
duty  and  would  always  do  it.  . 

Christophe  declared  that  he  would  go  and  would  never  again  | 
set  foot  in  their  house.  However,  he  did  not  go  until  he  had  | 
relieved  his  feelings  by  telling  them  what  he  had  still  to  say  ^ 
about  their  famous ‘Duty,  which  had  become  to  him  a personal  | 
enemy.  He  said  that  their  Duty  was  the  sort  of  thing  to  make 
him  love  vice.  It  was  people  like  them  who  discouraged  good,  S 
by  insisting  on  making  it  unpleasant.  It  was  their  fault  that  ^ 
so  many  find  delight  by  contrast  among  those  who  are  dishonest,,  ; 


YOUTH 


325 


but  amiable  and  laughter-loving.  It  was  a profanation  of  the 
name  of  duty  to  apply  it  to  everything,  to  the  most  stupid  tasks, 
to  trivial  things,  with  a stiff  and  arrogant  severity  which  ends 
by  darkening  and  poisoning  life.  Duty,  he  said,  was  exceptional : 
it  should  be  kept  for  moments  of  real  sacrifice,  and  not  used 
to  lend  the  lover  of  its  name  to  ill-humor  and  the  desire  to 
be  disagreeable  to  others.  There  was  no  reason,  because  they 
were  stupid  enough  or  ungracious  enough  to  be  sad,  to  want 
everybody  else  to  be  so  too  and  to  impose  on  everybody  their 
decrepit  way  of  living.  . . . The  first  of  all  virtues  is  joy.  Vir- 
tue must  be  happy,  free,  and  unconstrained.  He  who  does 
good  must  give  pleasure  to  himself.  But  this  perpetual  upstart 
Duty,  this  pedagogic  tyranny,  this  peevishness,  this  futile  dis- 
cussion, this  acrid,  puerile  quibbling,  this  ungraciousness,  this 
charmless  life,  without  politeness,  without  silence,  this  mean- 
spirited  pessimism,  which  lets  slip  nothing  that  can  make  exist- 
ence poorer  than  it  is,  this  vainglorious  unintelligence,  which 
finds  it  easier  to  despise  others  than  to  understand  them,  all 
this  middle-class  morality,  without  greatness,  without  large- 
ness, without  happiness,  without  beauty,  all  these  things  are 
odious  and  hurtful:  they  make  vice  appear  more  human  than 
virtue. 

So  thought  Christophe : and  in  his  desire  to  hurt  those  who 
had  wounded  him,  he  did  not  see  that  he  was  being  as  unjust 
as  those  of  whom  he  spoke. 

No  doubt  these  unfortunate  people  were  almost  as  he  saw 
them.  But  it  was  not  their  fault:  it  was  the  fault  of  their 
ungracious  life,  which  had  made  their  faces,  their  doings,  and 
their  thoughts  ungracious.  They  had  suffered  the  deformation 
of  misery — not  that  great  misery  which  swoops  down  and  slays 
or  forges  anew — ^but  the  misery  of  ever  recurring  ill-fortune, 
that  small  misery  which  trickles  down  drop  by  drop  from  the 
first  day  to  the  last.  . . . Sad,  indeed!  For  beneath  these 
rough  exteriors  what  treasures  in  reserve  are  there,  of  upright- 
ness, of  kindness,  of  silent  heroism  ! . . . The  whole  strength  of 
a people,  all  the  sap  of  the  future. 

Christophe  was  not  wrong  in  thinking  duty  exceptional.  But 
love  is  so  no  less.  Everything  is  exceptional.  Everything  that 
is  of  worth  has  no  worse  enemy — not  the  evil  (the  vices  are  of 


326 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


worth) — ^but  the  habitual.  The  mortal  enemy  of  the  soul  is 
the  daily  wear  and  tear. 

Ada  was  beginning  to  weary  of  it.  She  was  not  clever  enough 
to  find  new  food  for  her  love  in  an  abundant  nature  like  that 
of  Christophe.  Her  senses  and  her  vanity  had  extracted  from 
it  all  the  pleasure  they  could  find  in  it.  There  was  left  her 
only  the  pleasure  of  destroying  it.  She  had  that  secret  instinct 
.common  to  so  many  women,  even  good  women,  to  so  many 
men,  even  clever  men,  who  are  not  creative  either  of  art,  or  of 
children,  or  of  pure  action, — no  matter  what:  of  life — and  yet 
have  too  much  life  in  apathy  and  resignation  to  bear  with  their 
uselessness.  They  desire  others  to  be  as  useless  as  themselves 
and  do  their  best  to  make  them  so.  Sometimes  they  do  so 
in  spite  of  themselves:  and  when  they  become  aware  of  their 
criminal  desire  they  hotly  thrust  it  back.  But  often  they  hug 
it  to  themselves:  and  they  set  themselves  according  to  their 
strength — some  modestly  in  their  own  intimate  circle — others 
largely  with  vast  audiences — ^to  destroy  everything  that  has  life, 
everything  that  loves  life,  everything  that  deserves  life.  The 
critic  who  takes  upon  himself  to  diminish  the  stature  of 
great  men  and  great  thoughts — and  the  girl  who  amuses 
herself  with  dragging  down  her  lovers,  are  both  mischievous 
beasts  of  the  same  kind. — ^But  the  second  is  the  pleasanter  of 
the  two. 

Ada  then  would  have  liked  to  corrupt  Christophe  a little,  to 
humiliate  him.  In  truth,  she  was  not  strong  enough.  More 
intelligence  was  needed,  even  in  corruption.  She  felt  that: 
and  it  was  not  the  least  of  her  rankling  feelings  against  Chris- 
tophe that  her  love  could  do  him  no  harm.  She  did  not  admit 
the  desire  that  was  in  her  to  do  him  harm : perhaps  she  would 
have  done  him  none  if  she  had  been  able.  But  it  annoyed  her 
that  she  could  not  do  it.  It  is  to  fail  in  love  for  a woman 
not  to  leave  her  the  illusion  of  her  power  for  good  or  evil  over 
her  lover : to  do  that  must  inevitably  be  to  impel  her  irresistibly 
to  the  test  of  it.  Christophe  paid  no  attention  to  it.  When 
Ada  asked  him  jokingly: 

“Would  you  leave  your  music  for  me?” 

(Although  she  had  no  wish  for  him  to  do  so.) 

He  replied  frankly: 


YOUTH 


327 


No,  my  dear : neither  you  nor  anybody  else  can  do  anything 
against  that.  I shall  always  make  music.^^ 

And  you  say  you  love  ? cried  she,  put  out. 

She  hated  his  music — the  more  so  because  she  did  not  under- 
stand it,  and  it  was  impossible  for  her  to  find  a means  of  coming 
to  grips  with  this  invisible  enemy  and  so  to  wound  Christophe 
in  his  passion.  If  she  tried  to  talk  of  it  contemptuously,  or 
scornfully  to  judge  Christophers  compositions,  he  would 
shout  with  laughter;  and  in  spite  of  her  exasperation  Ada 
would  relapse  into  silence:  for  she  saw  that  she  was  being 
ridiculous. 

But  if  there  was  nothing  to  be  done  in  that  direction,  she 
had  discovered  another  weak  spot  in  Christophe,  one  more  easy 
of  access:  his  moral  faith.  In  spite  of  his  squabble  with  the 
Vogels,  and  in  spite  of  the  intoxication  of  his  adolescence,  Chris- 
tophe had  preserved  an  instinctive  modesty,  a need  of  purity, 
of  which  he  was  entirely  unconscious.  At  first  it  struck  Ada, 
attracted  and  charmed  her,  then  made  her  impatient  and  irri- 
table, and  finally,  being  the  woman  she  was,  she  detested  it.  She 
did  not  make  a frontal  attack.  She  would  ask  insidiously: 

Do  you  love  me  ? 

Of  course ! 

How  much  do  you  love  me  ? 

As  much  as  it  is  possible  to  love.” 

That  is  not  much  ...  after  all ! . . . What  would  you  do 
for  me  ? ” 

Whatever  you  like.” 

Would  you  do  something  dishonest.” 

That  would  be  a queer  way  of  loving.” 

^^That  is  not  what  I asked.  Wpuld  you?” 

^^Tt  is  not  necessary.” 

^^But  if  I wished  it?” 

^^You  would  be  wrong.” 

Perhaps.  . . . Would  you  do  it  ? ” 

He  tried  to  kiss  her.  But  she  thrust  him  away. 

Would  you  do  it?  Yes  or  no?” 

No,  my  dear.” 

She  turned  her  back  on  him  and  was  furious. 

^^You  do  not  love  me.  You  do  not  know  what  love  is.” 


328 


JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 


“ That  is  quite  possible,”  he  said  good-humoredly.  He  knew 
that,  like  anybody  else,  he  was  capable  in  a moment  of  passion 
of  committing  some  folly,  perhaps  something  dishonest,  and — 
who  knows  ? — even  more : but  he  would  have  thought  shame  of 
himself  if  he  had  boasted  of  it  in  cold  blood,  and  certainly  it 
would  be  dangerous  to  confess  it  to  Ada.  Some  instinct  warned 
him  that  the  beloved  foe  was  lying  in  ambush,  and  taking  stock 
of  his  smallest  remark:  he  would  not  give  her  any  weapon 
against  him. 

She  would  return  to  the  charge  again,  and  ask  him : 

“ Do  YOU  love  me  because  you  love  me,  or  because  I love 
you  ? ” 

“ Because  I love  you.” 

“Then  if  I did  not  love  you,  you  would  still  love  me?” 

“ Yes.” 

“ And  if  I loved  some  one  else  you  would  still  love  me  ? ” 

“ Ah ! I don’t  know  about  that.  ...  I don’t  think  so.  . . . 
In  any  case  you  would  be  the  last  person  to  whom  I should  say 
so.” 

“ How  would  it  be  changed  ? ” 

“ Many  things  would  be  changed.  Myself,  perhaps.  You, 
certainly.” 

“ And  if  I changed,  what  would  it  matter  ? ” 

“ All  the  difference  in  the  world.  I love  you  as  you  are.  If 
you  become  another  creature  I can’t  promise  to  love  you.” 

“You  do  not  love,  you  do  not  love!  What  is  the  use  of 
all  this  quibbling?  You  love  or  you  do  not  love.  If  you 
love  me  you  ought  to  love  me  just  as  I am,  whatever  I do, 
always.” 

“ That  would  be  to  love  you  like  an  animal.” 

“ I want  to  be  loved  like  that.” 

“ Then  you  have  made  a mistake,”  said  he  jokingly.  “ I am 
not  the  sort  of  man  you  want.  I would  like  to  be,  but  I cannot 
And  I will  not.” 

“ You  are  very  proud  of  your  intelligence ! You  love  your 
intelligence  more  than  you  do  me.” 

“ But  I love  you,  you  wretch,  more  than  you  love  yourself. 
The  more  beautiful  and  the  more  good  you  are,  the  more  I love 
you.” 


YOUTH 


329 


"You  are  a schoolmaster,”  she  said  with  asperity. 

“ What  would  you  ? I love  what  is  beautiful.  Anything  ugly 
disgusts  me.” 

“ Even  in  me  ? ” 

" Especially  in  you.” 

She  drummed  angrily  with  her  foot. 

" I will  not  be  judged.” 

"Then  complain  of  what  I judge  you  to  be,  and  of  what 
I love  in  you,”  said  he  tenderly  to  appease  her. 

She  let  him  take  her  in  his  arms,  and  deigned  to  smile,  and 
let  him  kiss  her.  But  in  a moment  when  he  thought  she  had 
forgotten  she  asked  uneasily; 

" What  do  you  think  ugly  in  me  ? ” » 

He  would  not  tell  her:  he  replied  cowardly: 

" I don’t  think  anything  ugly  in  you.” 

She  thought  for  a moment,  smiled,  and  said: 

“Just  a moment,  Christli:  you  say  that  you  do  not  like 
lying?” 

"I  despise  it.” 

"You  are  right,”  she  said.  “I  despise  it  too.  I am  of  a 
good  conscience.  I never  lie.” 

He  stared  at  her : she  was  sincere.  Her  unconsciousness  dis- 
armed him. 

" Then,”  she  went  on,  putting  her  arms  about  his  neck,  " why 
would  you  be  cross  with  me  if  I loved  some  one  else  and  told 
you  so  ? ” 

“ Don’t  tease  me.” 

" I’m  not  teasing : I am  not  saying  that  I do  love  some  one 
else : I am  saying  that  I do  not.  . . . But  if  I did  love  some  one 
later  on  . . .” 

“ Well,  don’t  let  us  think  of  it.” 

“ But  I want  to  think  of  it.  ...  You  would  not  be  angry 
with  me?  You  could  not  be  angry  with  me?  ” 

" I should  not  be  angry  with  you.  I should  leave  you.  That 
is  all.” 

“ Leave  me  ? Why  ? If  I still  loved  you.  . . . ? ” 

" While  you  loved  some  one  else  ? ” 

"Of  course.  It  happens  sometimes.” 

“ Well,  it  will  not  happen  with  us.’* 


330 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


“Why?”  / 

“ Because  as  soon  as  you  love  some  one  else,  I shall  love  you 
no  longer,  my  dear,  never,  never  again.”  | 

“ But  just  now  you  said  perhaps.  . . . Ah ! you  see  you  do  • 
not  love  me ! ” 

“Well  then:  all  the  better  for  you.” 

“ Because  . . . ? ” 

“ Because  if  I l^ved  you  when  you  loved  some  one  else  it 
might  turn  out  badly  for  you,  me,  and  him.” 

“ Then ! ...  Now  you  are  mad.  Then  I am  condemned  to 
stay  with  you  all  my  life  ? ” 

“Be  calm.  You  are  free.  You  shall  leave  me  when  you 
like.  Only  it  will  not  be  au  revoir : it  will  be  good-bye.” 

“ But  if  I still  love  you  ? ” 

“ When  people  love,  they  sacrifice  themselves  to  each  other.” 

“ Well,  then  . . . sacrifice  yourself ! ” 

He  could  not  help  laughing  at  her  egoism : and  she  laughed  ; 

too.  ; 

“ The  sacrifice  of  one  only,”  he  said,  “ means  the  love  of  one  ‘ 

only.”  ! 

“ Not  at  all.  It  means  the  love  of  both.  I shall  not  love  ^ 
you  much  longer  if  you  do  not  sacrifice  yourself  for  me.  And 
think,  Christli,  how  much  you  will  love  me,  when  you  have  . 
sacrificed  yourself,  and  how  happy  you  will  be.”  ; 

They  laughed  and  were  glad  to  have  a change  from  the  ; 
seriousness  of  the  disagreement.  | 

He  laughed  and  looked  at  her.  At  heart,  as  she  said,  she. 
had  no  desire  to  leave  Christophe  at  present:  if  he  irritated 
her  and  often  bored  her  she  knew  the  worth  of  such  devotion"^ 
as  his : and  she  loved  no  one  else.  She  talked  so  for  fun,  partly 
because  she  knew  he  disliked  it,  partly  because  she  took  pleasure 
in  playing  with  equivocal  and  unclean  thoughts  like  a child 
which  delights  to  mess  about  with  dirty  water.  He  knew  this. 
He  did  not  mind.  But  he  was  tired  of  these  unwholesome  dis- 
cussions, of  the  silent  struggle  against  this  uncertain  and  uneasy 
creature  whom  he  loved,  who  perhaps  loved  him : he  was  tired 
from  the  effort  that  he  had  to  make  to  deceive  himself  about 
her,  sometimes  tired  almost  to  tears.  He  would  think:  “Why, 
why  is  she  like  this?  Why  are  people  like  this?  How  second- 


I 


YOUTH 


331 


rate  life  is ! At  the  same  time  he  would  smile  as  he 

saw  her  pretty  face  above  him,  her  blue  eyes,  her  flower-like 
complexion,  her  laughing,  chattering  lips,  foolish  a little,  half 
open  to  reveal  the  brilliance  of  her  tongue  and  her  white  teeth. 
Their  lips  would  almost  touch:  and  he  would  look  at  her  as 
from  a distance,  a great  distance,  as  from  another  world:  he 
would  see  her  going  farther  and  farther  from  him,  vanishing 
in  a mist.  . . . And  then  he  would  lose  sight  of  her.  He  could 
hear  her  no  more.  He  would  fall  into  a sort  of  smiling  oblivion 
in  which  he  thought  of  his  music,  his  dreams,  a thousand  things 
foreign  to  Ada.  ...  Ah!  beautiful  music!  ...  so  sad,  so  mor- 
tally sad ! and  yet  kind,  loving.  . . . Ah ! how  good  it  is ! . . . 
It  is  that,  it  is  that.  . . . Nothing  else  is  true.  . . . 

She  would  shake  his  arm.  A voice  would  cry  : 

Eh,  what’s  the  matter  with  you?  You  are  mad,  quite  mad. 
Why  do  you  look  at  me  like  that?  Why  don’t  you  answer?” 

Once  more  he  would  see  the  eyes  looking  at  him.  Who  was 
it  ? ...  Ah ! yes.  ...  He  would  sigh. 

She  would  watch  him.  She  would  try  to  discover  what  he 
was  thinking  of.  She  did  not  understand:  but  she  felt  that  it 
was  useless:  that  she  could  not  keep  hold  of  him,  that  there 
was  always  a door  by  which  he  could  escape.  She  would  conceal 
her  irritation. 

Why  are  you  crying  ? ” she  asked  him  once  as  he  returned 
from  one  of  his  strange  journeys  into  another  life. 

He  drew  his  hands  across  his  eyes.  He  felt  that  they  were 
wet. 

do  not  know,”  he  said. 

Why  don’t  you  answer  ? Three  times  you  have  said  the 
same  thing.” 

What  do  you  want  ? ” he  asked  gently. 

She  went  back  to  her  absurd  discussions.  He  waved  his  hand 
wearily. 

^^Yes,”  she  said.  ^^I’ve  done.  Only  a word  more!”  And 
off  she  started  again. 

Christophe  shook  himself  angrily. 

Will  you  keep  your  dirtiness  to  yourself ! 

I was  only  joking.” 

Find  cleaner  subjects,  then ! ” 


i 


332 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


“ Tell  me  why,  then.  Tell  me  why  you  don’t  like  it.” 

“ Why  ? You  can’t  argue  as  to  why  a dump-heap  smells.  It 
does  smell,  and  that  is  all ! I hold  my  nose  and  go  away.” 

He  went  away,  furious : and  he  strode  along  taking  in  great 
breaths  of  the  cold  air. 

But  she  would  begin  again,  once,  twice,  ten  times.  She 
would  bring  forward  every  possible  subject  that  could  shock 
him  and  offend  his  conscience. 

He  thought  it  was  only  a morbid  jest  of  a neurasthenic  girl, 
amusing  herself  by  annoying  him.  He  would  shrug  his  shoul- 
ders or  pretend  not  to  hear  her : he  would  not  take  her  seriously. 
But  sometimes  he  would  long  to  throw  her  out  of  the  window: 
for  neurasthenia  and  the  neurasthenics  were  very  little  to  his 
taste.  ... 

But  ten  minutes  away  from  her  were  enough  to  make  him 
forget  everything  that  had  annoyed  him.  He  would  return  to 
Ada  with  a fresh  store  of  hopes  and  new  illusions.  He  loved  , 
^ her.  Love  is  a perpetual  act  of  faith.  Whether  God  exist  or  ■ 
I no  is  a small  matter:  we  believe,  because  we  believe.  We  love  . 
I because  we  love : there  is  no  need  of  reasons ! . . . 

i 

After  Christophe’s  quarrel  with  the  Vogels  it  became  im-  ; 
possible  for  them  to  stay  in  the  house,  and  Louisa  had  to  seek  ; 
another  lodging  for  herself  and  her  son.  : 

One  day  Christophe’s  younger  brother  Ernest,  of  whom  they  : 
had  not  heard  for  a long  time,  suddenly  turned  up.  He  was  , 
out  of  work,  having  been  dismissed  in  turn  from  all  the  situa-  j 
tions  he  had  procured : his  purse  was  empty  and  his  health  < 
ruined : and  so  he  had  thought  it  would  be  as  well  to  re-establish  ^ 
himself  in  his  mother’s  house.  • 

Ernest  was  not  on  bad  terms  with  either  of  his  brothers:' 
they  thought  very  little  of  him  and  he  knew  it:  but  he  did  not 
bear  any  grudge  against  them,  for  he  did  not  care.  They  had 
no  ill-feeling  against  him.  It  was  not  worth  the  trouble. 
Everything  they  said  to  him  slipped  off  his  back  without  leav- 
ing a mark.  He  just  smiled  with  his  sly  eyes,  tried  to  look 
contrite,  thought  of  something  else,  agreed,  thanked  them,  and 
in  the  end  always  managed  to  extort  money  from  one  or  other 
of  them.  In  spite  of  himself  Christophe  was  fond  of  the  pleas-^ 


YOUTH 


333 


ant  mortal  who,  like  himself,  and  more  than  himself,  resembled 
their  father  Melchior  in  feature.  Tall  and  strong  like  Chris- 
tophe,  he  had  regular  features,  a frank  expression,  a straight 
nose,  a laughing  mouth,  fine  teeth,  and  endearing  manners. 
When  even  Christophe  saw  him  he  was  disarmed  and  could  not 
deliver  half  the  reproaches  that  he  had  prepared:  in  his  heart 
he  had  a sort  of  motherly  indulgence  for  the  handsome  boy 
who  was  of  his  blood,  and  physically  at  all  events  did  him  credit.. 
He  did  not  believe  him  to  be  bad:  and  Ernest  was  not  a fooL. 
Without  culture,  he  was  not  without  brains:  he  was  even  not 
incapable  of  taking  an  interest  in  the  things  of  the  mind.  He 
enjoyed  listening  to  music : and  without  understanding  his 
brother’s  compositions  he  would  listen  to  them  with  interest. 
Christophe,  who  did  not  receive  too  much  sympathy  from  his 
family,  had  been  glad  to  see  him  at  some  of  his  concerts. 

But  Ernest’s  chief  talent  was  the  knowledge  that  he  pos- 
sessed of  the  character  of  his  two  brothers,  and  his  skill  in 
making  use  of  his  knowledge.  It  was  no  use  Christophe  know- 
ing Ernest’s  egoism  and  indifference:  it  was  no  use  his  seeing 
that  Ernest  never  thought  of  his  mother  or  himself  except 
when  he  had  need  of  them:  he  was  always  taken  in  by  his 
affectionate  ways  and  very  rarely  did  he  refuse  him  anything. 
He  much  preferred  him  to  his  other  brother  Eodolphe,  who 
was  orderly  and  correct,  assiduous  in  his  business,  strictly  moral, 
never  asked  for  money,  and  never  gave  any  either,  visited  his 
mother  regularly  every  Sunday,  stayed  an  hour,  and  only  talked 
about  himself,  boasting  about  himself,  his  firm,  and  everything 
that  concerned  him,  never  asking  about  the  others,  and  taking 
no  interest  in  them,  and  going  away  when  the  hour  was  up, 
quite  satisfied  with  having  done  his  duty.  Christophe  could 
not  bear  him.  He  always  arranged  to  be  out  when  Eodolphe 
came.  Eodolphe  was  jealous  of  him:  he  despised  artists,  and 
Christophe’s  success  really  hurt  him,  though  he  did  not  fail 
to  turn  his  small  fame  to  account  in  the  commercial  circles  in 
which  he  moved:  but  he  never  said  a word  about  it  either  to 
his  mother  or  to  Christophe:  he  pretended  to  ignore  it.  On 
the  other  hand,  he  never  ignored  the  least  of  the  unpleasant 
things  that  happened  to  Christophe.  Christophe  despised  such 
pettiness,  and  pretended  not  to  notice  it:  but  it  would  really 


334 


JEAN-CIIEISTOPHE 


have  hurt  him  to  know,  though  he  never  thought  about  it,  that  ; 
much  of  the  unpleasant  information  that  Eodolphe  had  about  ' 
him  came  from  Ernest.  The  young  rascal  fed  the  differences 
between  Christophe  and  Eodolphe : no  doubt  he  recognized  Chris-  i 
tophe’s  superiority  and  perhaps  even  sympathized  a little  ironi- 
cally with  his  candor.  But  he  took  good  care  to  turn  it  to 
account:  and  while  he  despised  Eodolphe’s  ill-feeling  he  ex- 
ploited it  shamefully.  He  flattered  his  vanity  and  jealousy, 
accepted  his  rebukes  deferentially  and  kept  him  primed  with 
the  scandalous  gossip  of  the  town,  especially  with  everything 
concerning  Christophe, — of  which  he  was  always  marvelously 
informed.  So  he  attained  his  ends,  and  Eodolphe,  in  spite  of 
his  avance,  allowed  Ernest  to  despoil  him  just  as  Christophe 
did. 

So  Ernest  made  use  and  a mock  of  them  both,  impartially. 
And  so  both  of  them  loved  him. 

In  spite  of  his  tricks  Ernest  was  in  a pitiful  condition, 
when  he  turned  up  at  his  mother’s  house.  He  had  come  | 
from  Munich,  where  he  had  found  and,  as  usual,  almost  im-! 
mediately  lost  a situation.  He  had  had  to  travel  the  best^ 
part  of  the  way  on  foot,  through  storms  of  rain,  sleeping, 
God  knows  where.  He  was  covered  with  mud,  ragged,  look-' 
ing  like  a beggar,  and  coughing  miserably.  Louisa  was  up- ! 
set  and  Christophe  ran  to  him  in  alarm  when  they  saw  him 
come  in.  Ernest,  whose  tears  flowed  easily,  did  not  fail  to; 
make  use  of  the  effect  he  had  produced : and  there  was  a | 
general  reconciliation:  all  three  wept  in  each  other’s  arms.  i 

Christophe  gave  up  his  room:  they  warmed  the  bed,  and  laid' 
the  invalid  in  it,  who  seemed  to  be  on  the  point  of  death.  ^ 
Louisa  and  Christophe  sat  by  his  bedside  and  took  it  in  turns  i 
to  watch  by  him.  They  called  in  a doctor,  procured  medicines, 
made  a good  Are  in  the  room,  and  gave  him  special  food. 

Then  they  had  to  clothe  him  from  head  to  foot : linen,  shoes, 
clothes,  everything  new.  Ernest  left  himself  in  their  hands. 
Louisa  and  Christophe  sweated  to  squeeze  the  money  from  their 
expenditure.  They  were  very  straitened  at  the  moment:  the 
removal,  the  new  lodgings,  which  were  dearer  though  just  as 
uncomfortable,  fewer  lessons  for  Christophe  and  more  expenses. 
They  could  just  make  both  ends  meet.  They  managed 


YOUTH 


335 


somehow.  No  doubt  Christophe  could  have  applied  to 
Eodolphe,  who  was  more  in  a position  to  help  Ernest, 
but  he  would  not : he  made  it  a point  of  honor  to  help  his 
brother  alone.  He  thought  himself  obliged  to  do  so  as  the 
eldest,— and  because  he  was  Christophe.  Hot  with  shame  he 
had  to  accept,  to  declare  his  willingness  to  accept  an  offer  which 
he  had  indignantly  rejected  a fortnight  before, — a proposal  from 
an  agent  of  an  unknown  wealthy  amateur  who  wanted  to 
buy  a musical  composition  for  publication  under  his  own  name. 
Louisa  took  work  out,  mending  linen.  They  hid  their  sacrifice 
from  each  other:  they  lied  about  the  money  they  brought 
home. 

When  Ernest  was  convalescent  and  sitting  huddled  up  by 
the  fire,  he  confessed  one  day  between  his  fits  of  coughing  that 
he  had  a few  debts.— They  were  paid.  No  one  reproached  him. 
That  would  not  have  been  kind  to  an  invalid  and  a prodigal 
son  who  had  repented  and  returned  home.  For  Ernest  seemed 
to  have  been  changed  by  adversity  and  sickness.  With  tears 
in  his  eyes  he  spoke  of  his  past  misdeeds:  and  Louisa  kissed 
him  and  told  him  to  think  no  more  of  them.  He  was  fond: 
he  had  always  been  able  to  get  round  his  mother  by  his  demon- 
strations of  affection:  Christophe  had  once  been  a little  jealous 
of  him.  Now  he  thought  it  natural  that  the  youngest  and  the 
weakest  son  should  be  the  most  loved.  In  spite  of  the  small 
difference  in  their  ages  he  regarded  him  almost  as  a son  rather 
than  as  a brother.  Ernest  showed  great  respect  for  him : some- 
times he  would  allude  to  the  burdens  that  Christophe  was  taking 
upon  himself,  and  to  his  sacrifice  of  money:  but  Christophe 
would  not  let  him  go  on,  and  Ernest  would  content  himself 
with  showing  his  gratitude  in  his  eyes  humbly  and  affectionately. 
He  would  argue  with  the  advice  that  Christophe  gave  him : and 
he  would  seem  disposed  to  change  his  way  of  living  and  to 
' work  seriously  as  soon  as  he  was  well  again. 

He  recovered:  but  had  a long  convalescence.  The  doctor 
declared  that  his  health,  which  he  had  abused,  needed  to  be 
fostered.  So  he  stayed  on  in  his  mother’s  house,  sharing 
Christophe’s  bed,  eating  heartily  the  bread  that  his  brother 
earned,  and  the  little  dainty  dishes  that  Louisa  prepared  for 
him.  He  never  spoke  of  going.  Louisa  and  Christophe  never 


I 


I 


336 


JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 


mentioned  it  either.  They  were  too  happy  to  have  found  again 
the  son  and  the  brother  they  loved. 

Little  by  little  in  the  long  evenings  that  he  spent  with  Ernest 
Christophe  began  to  talk  intimately  to  him.  He  needed  to 
confide  in  somebody.  Ernest  was  clever:  he  had  a quick  mind 
and  understood — or  seemed  to  understand — on  a hint  only. 
There  was  pleasure  in  talking  to  him.  And  yet  Christophe 
dared  not  tell  him  about  what  lay  nearest  to  his  heart : his 
love.  He  was  kept  back  by  a sort  of  modesty.  Ernest,  who 
knew  all  about  it,  never  let  it  appear  that  he  knew. 

One  day  when  Ernest  was  quite  well  again  he  went  in  the 
sunny  afternoon  and  lounged  along  the  Rhine.  As  he  passed 
a noisy  inn  a little  way  out  of  the  town,  where  there  were 
drinking  and  dancing  on  Sundays,  he  saw  Christophe  sitting 
with  Ada  and  Myrrha,  who  were  making  a great  noise.  Chris- 
tophe saw  him  too,  and  blushed.  Ernest  was  discreet  and  passed  . 
on  without  acknowledging  him. 

Christophe  was  much  embarrassed  by  the  encounter:  it  made 
him  more  keenly  conscious  of  the  company  in  which  he  was:  j 
it  hurt  him  that  his  brother  should  have  seen  him  then;  not 
only  because  it  made  him  lose  the  right  of  judging  Ernest’s  | 
conduct,  but  because  he  had  a very  lofty,  very  naive,  and  rather  , 
archaic  notion  of  his  duties  as  an  elder  brother  which  would  ^ 
have  seemed  absurd  to  many  people : he  thought  that  in  failing 
in  that  duty,  as  he  was  doing,  he  was  lowered  in  his  own  eyes.  ; 

In  the  evening  when  they  were  together  in  their  room,  he  ' 
waited  for  Ernest  to  allude  to  what  had  happened.  But  Ernest  ] 
prudently  said  nothing  and  waited  also.  Then  while  they  were  i 
undressing  Christophe  decided  to  speak  about  his  love.  He  was  * 
so  ill  at  ease  that  he  dared  not  look  at  Ernest:  and  in  his  shy-  | 
ness  he  assumed  a gruff  way  of  speaking.  Ernest  did  not  help 
him  out:  he  was  silent  and  did  not  look  at  him,  though  he 
watched  him  all  the  same:  and  he  missed  none  of  the  humor 
of  Christophers  awkwardness  and  clumsy  words.  Christophe 
hardly  dared  pronounce  Ada’s  name:  and  the  portrait  that  he 
drew  of  her  would  have  done  just  as  well  for  any  woman  who 
was  loved.  But  he  spoke  of  his  love : little  by  little  he  was 
carried  away  by  the  flood  of  tenderness  that  filled  his  heart: 
he  said  how  good  it  was  to  love,  how  wretched  he  had  been  before 


YOUTH 


337 


he  had  found  that  light  in  the  darkness,  and  that  life  was 
nothing  without  a dear,  deep-seated  love.  His  brother  listened 
gravely:  he  replied  tactfully,  and  asked  no  questions:  but  a 
warm  handshake  showed  that  he  was  , of  Christophers  way  of 
thinking.  They  exchanged  ideas  concerning  love  and  life. 
Christophe  was  happy  at  being  so  well  understood.  They  ex- 
changed a brotherly  embrace  before  they  went  to  sleep. 

Christophe  grew  accustomed  to  confiding  his  love  to  Ernest, 
though  always  shyly  and  reservedly.  Ernest’s  discretion  re- 
assured him.  He  let  him  know  his  uneasiness  about  Ada:  but 
he  never  blamed  her:  he  blamed  himself:  and  with  tears  in 
his  eyes  he  would  declare  that  he  could  not  live  if  he  were  to 
lose  her. 

He  did  not  forget  to  tell  Ada  about  Ernest:  he  praised  his 
wit  and  his  good  looks. 

Ernest  never  approached  Christophe  with  a request  to  be 
introduced  to  Ada:  but  he  would  shut  himself  up  in  his  room 
and  sadly  refuse  to  go  out,  saying  that  he  did  not  know  any- 
body. Christophe  would  think  ill  of  himself  on  Sundays  for 
going  on  his  excursions  with  Ada,  while  his  brother  stayed 
at  home.  And  yet  he  hated  not  to  be  alone  with  his  beloved: 
he  accused  himself  of  selfishness  and  proposed  that  Ernest 
should  come  with  them. 

The  introduction  took  place  at  Ada’s  door,  on  the  landing. 
Ernest  and  Ada  bowed  politely.  Ada  came  out,  followed  by 
her  inseparable  Myrrha,  who  when  she  saw  Ernest  gave  a little 
cry  of  surprise.  Ernest  smiled,  went  up  to  Myrrha,  and 
kissed  her : she  seemed  to  take  it  as  a matter  of  course. 

What ! You  know  each  other?  ” asked  Christophe  in  aston- 
ishment. 

Why,  yes ! ” said  Myrrha,  laughing. 

Since  when  ? ” 

Oh,  a long  time ! ” 

And  you  knew  ? ” asked  Christophe,  turning  to  Ada.  Why 
did  you  not  tell  me?” 

Do  you  think  I know  all  Myrrha’s  lovers  ? ” said  Ada,  shrug- 
ging her  shoulders. 

Myrrha  took  up  the  word  and  pretended  in  fun  to  be  angry. 
Christophe  could  not  find  out  any  more  about  it.  He  was 


338 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


depressed.  It  seemed  to  him  that  Ernest  and  Myrrha  and  Ada  i 
had  been  lacking  in  honesty,  although  indeed  he  could  not  have  . 
brought  any  lie  up  against  them : but  it  was  difficult  to  believe 
that  Myrrha,  who  had  no  secrets  from  Ada,  had  made  a mys-  | 
tery  of  this,  and  that  Ernest  and  Ada  were  not  already  ac-  j 
quainted  with  each  other.  He  watched  them.  But  they  only 
exchanged  a few  trivial  words  and  Ernest  only  paid  attention 
to  Myrrha  all  the  rest  of  the  day.  Ada  only  spoke  to  Chris- 
tophe:  and  she  was  much  more  amiable  to  him  than  usual. 

From  that  time  on  Ernest  always  joined  them.  Christophe 
could  have  done  without  him  : but  he  dared  not  say  so.  He 
had  no  other  motive  for  wanting  to  leave  his  brother  out  than 
his  shame  in  having  him  for  boon  companion.  He  had  no 
suspicion  of  him.  Ernest  gave  him  no  cause  for  it;  he  seemed 
to  be  in  love  with  Myrrha  and  was  always  reserved  and  polite 
with  Ada,  and  even  affected  to  avoid  her  in  a way  that  was  a . 
little  out  of  place:  it  was  as  though  he  wished  to  show  his 
brother’s  mistress  a little  of  the  respect  he  showed  to  himself. 
Ada  was  not  surprised  by  it  and  was  none  the  less  careful. 

They  went  on  long  excursions  together.  The  two  brothers 
would  walk  on  in  front.  Ada  and  Myrrha,  laughing  and  whis-  ! 
pering,  would  follow  a few  yards  behind.  They  would  stop  ; 
in  the  middle  of  the  road  and  talk.  Christophe  and  Ernest  ; 
would  stop  and  wait  for  them.  Christophe  would  lose  patience  ^ 
and  go  on : but  soon  he  would  turn  back  annoyed  and  irritated,  ; 
by  hearing  Ernest  talking  and  laughing  with  the  two  young  ^ 
women.  He  would  want  to  know  what  they  were  saying:  but  ] 
when  they  came  up  with  him  their  conversation  would  stop.  < 

“What  are  you  three  always  plotting  together?”  he  would  ^ 

ask.  i 

They  would  reply  with  some  joke.  They  had  a secret  under- 
standing like  thieves  at  a fair. 

Christophe  had  a sharp  quarrel  with  Ada.  They  had  been 
cross  with  each  other  all  day.  Strange  to  say,  Ada  had  not 
assumed  her  air  of  offended  dignity,  to  which  she  usually 
resorted  in  such  cases,  so  as  to  avenge  herself,  by  making  her- 
self as  intolerably  tiresome  as  usual.  Now  she  simply  pre- 
tended to  ignore  Christophe’s  existence  and  she  was  in  excellent 


YOUTH 


339 


spirits  with  the  other  two.  It  was  as  though  in  her  heart  she 
was  not  put  out  at  all  by  the  quarrel. 

Christophe,  on  the  other  hand,  longed  to  make  peace:  he 
was  more  in  love  than  ever.  His  tenderness  was  now  mingled 
with  a feeling  of  gratitude  for  all  the  good  things  love  had 
brought  him,  and  regret  for  the  hours  he  had  wasted  in  stupid 
argument  and  angry  thoughts — and  the  unreasoning  fear,  the 
mysterious  idea  that  their  love  was  nearing  its  end.  Sadly  he 
looked  at  Ada’s  pretty  face  and  she  pretended  not  to  see  him 
while  she  was  laughing  with  the  others:  and  the  sight  of  her 
woke  in  him  so  many  dear  memories,  of  great  love,  of  sincere 
intimacy. — Her  face  had  sometimes — ^it  had  now— so  much  good- 
ness in  it,  a smile  so  pure,  that  Christophe  asked  himself  why 
things  were  not  better  between  them,  why  they  spoiled  their 
happiness  with  their  whimsies,  why  she  would  insist  on  for- 
getting their  bright  hours,  and  denying  and  combating  all  that 
was  good  and  honest  in  her — what  strange  satisfaction  she 
could  find  in  spoiling,  and  smudging,  if  only  in  thought,  the 
purity  of  their  love.  He  was  conscious  of  an  immense  need 
of  believing  in  the  object  of  his  love,  and  he  tried  once  more 
to  bring  back  his  illusions.  He  accused  himself  of  injustice: 
he  was  remorseful  for  the  thoughts  that  he  attributed  to  her, 
and  of  his  lack  of  charity. 

He  went  to  her  and  tried  to  talk  to  her:  she  answered  him 
with  a few  curt  words:  she  had  no  desire  for  a reconciliation 
with  him.  He  insisted:  he  begged  her  to  listen  to  him  for  a 
moment  away  from  the  others.  She  followed  him  ungraciously. 
When  they  were  a few  yards  away  so  that  neither  Myrrha  nor 
Ernest  could  see  them,  he  took  her  hands  and  begged  her 
I pardon,  and  knelt  at  her  feet  in  the  dead  leaves  of  the  wood. 

He  told  her  that  he  could  not  go  on  living  so  at  loggerheads 
I with  her:  that  he  found  no  pleasure  in  the  walk,  or  the  fine 
i day:  that  he  could  enjoy  nothing,  and  could  not  even  breathe, 

I knowing  that  she  detested  him:  he  needed  her  love.  Yes:  he 
I was  often  unjust,  violent,  disagreeable : he  begged  her  to  forgive 
j him:  it  was  the  fault  of  his  love,  he  could  not  bear  anything 
second-rate  in  her,  nothing  that  was  altogether  unworthy  of 
, her  and  their  memories  of  their  dear  past.  He  reminded  her 
of  it  all,  of  their  first  meeting,  their  first  days  together:  he 


340 


JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 


said  that  he  loved  her  just  as  much,  that  he  would  always  love 
her,  that  she  should  not  go  away  from  him!  She  was  every- 
thing to  him.  . . . 

Ada  listened  to  him,  smiling,  uneasy,  almost  softened.  She 
looked  at  him  with  kind  eyes,  eyes  that  said  that  they  loved 
each  other,  and  that  she  was  no  longer  angry.  They  kissed, 
and  holding  each  other  close  they  went  into  the  leafless  woods. 
She  thought  Christophe  good  and  gentle,  and  was  grateful  to 
him  for  his  tender  words : but  she  did  not  relinquish  the  naughty 
whims  that  were  in  her  mind.  But  she  hesitated,  she  did  not 
cling  to  them  so  tightly : and  yet  she  did  not  abandon  what  she 
had  planned  to  do.  Why  ? Who  can  say  ? . . . Because  she 
had  vowed  what  she  would  do? — Who  knows?  Perhaps  she 
thought  it  more  entertaining  to  deceive  her  lover  that  day,  to 
prove  to  him,  to  prove  to  herself  her  freedom.  She  had  no 
thought  of  ISsing  him : she  did  not  wish  for  that.  She  thought 
herself  more  sure  of  him  than  ever. 

They  reached  a clearing  in  the  forest.  There  were  two 
paths.  Christophe  took  one.  Ernest  declared  that  the  other 
led  more  quickly  to  the  top  of  the  hill  whither  they  were  going. 
Ada  agreed  with  him.  Christophe,  who  knew  the  way,  having 
often  been  there,  maintained  that  they  were  wrong.  They  did 
not  yield.  Then  they  agreed  to  try  it : and  each  wagered  that 
he  would  arrive  first.  Ada  went  with  Ernest.  Myrrha  accom- 
panied Christophe:  she  pretended  that  she  was  sure  that  he 
was  right:  and  she  added,  “As  usual.”  Christophe  had  taken 
the  game  seriously:  and  as  he  never  liked  to  lose,  he  walked 
quickly,  too  quickly  for  Myrrha’s  liking,  for  she  was  in  much 
less  of  a hurry  than  he. 

“ Don’t  be  in  a hurry,  my  friend,”  she  said,  in  her  quiet, 
ironic  voice,  “ we  shall  get  there  first.” 

He  was  a little  sorry. 

“ True,”  he  said,  I am  going  a little  too  fast : there  is  no 
need.” 

He  slackened  his  pace. 

“But  I know  them,”  he  went  on.  “I  am  sure  they  will 
run  so  as  to  be  there  before  us.” 

Myrrha  burst  out  laughing. 

“ Oh ! no,”  she  said.  “ Oh ! no : don’t  you  worry  about  that.” 


YOUTH 


341 


She  hung  on  his  arm  and  pressed  close  to  him.  She  was 
a little  shorter  than  Christophe,  and  as  they  walked  she  raised 
her  soft  eyes  to  his.  She  was  really  pretty  and  alluring.  He 
hardly  recognized  her:  the  change  was  extraordinary.  Usually 
her  face  was  rather  pale  and  puffy : but  the  smallest  excitement, 
a merry  thought,  or  the  desire  to  please,  was  enough  to  make 
her  worn  expression  vanish,  and  her  cheeks  go  pink,  and  the 
little  wrinkles  in  her  eyelids  round  and  below  her  eyes  dis- 
appear, and  her  eyes  flash,  and  her  whole  face  take  on  a youth, 
a life,  a spiritual  quality  that  never  was  in  Ada’s.  Christophe 
was  surprised  by  this  metamorphosis,  and  turned  his  eyes  away 
from  hers : he  was  a little  uneasy  at  being  alone  with  her.  She 
embarrassed  him  and  prevented  him  from  dreaming  as  he 
pleased : he  did  not  listen  to  what  she  said,  he  did  not  answer 
her,  or  if  he  did  it  was  only  at  random:  he  was  thinking — 
he  wished  to  think  only  of  Ada.  He  thought  of  the  kindness 
in  her  eyes,  her  smile,  her  kiss:  and  his  heart  was  filled  with 
love.  Myrrha  wanted  to  make  him  admire  the  beauty  of  the 
trees  with  their  little  branches  against  the  clear  sky.  . . . Yes : 
it  was  all  beautiful:  the  clouds  were  gone,  Ada  had  returned 
to  him,  he  had  succeeded  in  breaking  the  ice  that  lay  between 
them:  they  loved  once  more:  near  or  far,  they  were  one.  He 
sighed  with  relief : how  light  the  air  was ! Ada  had  come  back 
to  him.  . . . Everything  brought  her  to  mind.  ...  It  was  a 
little  damp : would  she  not  be  cold  ? . . . The  lovely  trees  were 
powdered  with  hoar-frost : what  a pity  she  should  not  see  them ! 

. . . But  he  remembered  the  wager,  and  hurried  on:  he  was 
concerned  only  with  not  losing  the  way.  He  shouted  joyfully 
as  they  reached  the  goal : 

We  are  first ! ” 

He  waved  his  hat  gleefully.  Myrrha  watched  him  and  smiled. 

The  place'  where  they  stood  was  a high,  steep  rock  in  the 
middle  pf  the  woods.  From  this  flat  summit  with  its  fringe 
of  nut-trees  and  little  stunted  oaks  they  could  see,  over  the 
wooded  slopes,  the  tops  of  the  pines  bathed  in  a purple  mist, 
ind  the  long  ribbon  of  the  Ehine  in  the  blue  valley.  Not  a bird 
:ialled.  Not  a voice.  Not  a breath  of  air.  A still,  calm  winter’s 
lay,  its  chilliness  faintly  warmed  by  the  pale  beams  of  a misty 
;3un.  Now  and  then  in  the  distance  there  came  the  sharp 


343 


JEAN-CHKISTOPHE 


whistle  of  a train  in  the  valley.  Christophe  stood  at  the  edge 
of  the  rock  and  looked  down  at  the  countryside.  Myrrha  watched 
Christophe. 

He  turned  to  her  amiably: 

“Well!  The  lazy  things.  I told  them  so!  . . . Well,  we 
must  wait  for  them.  ... 

He  lay  stretched  out  in  the  sun  on  the  cracked  eartti. 

“ Yes.^  Let  us  wait  . . .”  said  Myrrha,  taking  off  her  hat  , 
In  her  voice  there  was  something  so  quizzical  that  he  raised 

his  head  and  looked  at  her. 

“What  is  it?”  she  asked  quietly. 

“ What  did  you  say  ? ” „ 

“ I said : Let  us  wait.  It  was  no  use  making  me  run  so  last. 

They  waited  lying  on  the  rough  ground.  Myrrha  hummed  a , 
tune.  ^Christophe  took  it  up  for  a few  phrases.  But  he  stopped^ 
every  now  and  then  to  listen.  ; 

“ I think  I can  hear  them.”  | 

Myrrha  went  on  singing.  . 

“ Do  stop  for  a moment.”  | 

Myrrha  stopped.  ; 

“No.  It  is  nothing.”  ; 

She  went  on  with  her  song.  , ; 

Christophe  could  not  stay  still.  ] 

“ Perhaps  they  have  lost  their  way.”  | 

, “Lost?  They  could  not.  Ernest  knows  all  the  paths.  j 
A fantastic  idea  passed  through  Christophe’s  mind.  j 

“ Perhaps  they  arrived  first,  and  went  away  before  we  cam  . j 
Myrrha  was  lying  on  her  back  and  looking  at  the  sum 
was  Lized  with  a wild  burst  of  laughter  in  the  middle  of  het 
song  and  all  but  choked.  Christophe  insisted  He  wanted  to 
go  down  to  the  station,  saying  that  their  friends  would  be  the 
alreadv  Myrrha  at  last  made  up  her  mind  to  move. 

“You  »ould  be  certein  to  lose  them!  . . . There  was  neve, 

any  talk  about  the  station.  We  were  to  meet  here. 

He  sat  down  by  her  side.  She  was  amused  by  is  g • 

He  was  conscious  of  the  irony  in  her  gaze  as  she  looked  a 

him  He  began  to  be  seriously  troubled— to  be  anxious  abw 
tliem-  he  did  not  suspect  them.  He  got  up  once  more.  Hi 


YOUTH 


343 


spoke  of  going  down  into  the  woods  again  and  looking  for  them, 
calling  to  them.  Myrrha  gave  a little  chuckle;  she  took  from 
her  pocket  a needle,  scissors,  and  thread:  and  she  calmly  undid, 
and  sewed  ip  again  the  feathers  in  her  hat:  she  seemed  to  have 
established  herself  for  the  day. 

“ No,  no,  silly,”  she  said.  If  they  wanted  to  come  do  you 
think  they  would  not  come  of  their  own  accord? 

There  was  a catch  at  his  heart.  He  turned  towards  her: 
she  did  not  look  at  him : she  was  busy  with  her  work.  He  went 
up  to  her. 

“ Myrrha ! ” he  said. 

“ Eh  ? ” she  replied  without  stopping.  He  knelt  now  to  look 
more  nearly  at  her. 

“ Myrrha ! ” he  repeated. 

‘^Well?”  she  asked,  raising  her  eyes  from  her  work  and 
looking  at  him  with  a smile.  “ What  is  it?  ” 

She  had  a mocking  expression  as  she  saw  his  downcast 

face.  , • 1 » 

“ Myrrha ! ” he  asked,  choking,  “ tell  me  what  you  think  . . . 

She  shrugged  her  shoulders,  smiled,  and  went  on  working. 

He  caught  her  hands  and  took  away  the  hat  at  which  she  was 
sewing. 

“ Leave  off,  leave  off,  and  tell  me.  ...” 

She  looked  squarely  at  him  and  waited.  She  saw  that  Chris- 
tophe’s  lips  were  trembling. 

“ You  think,”  he  said  in  a low  voice,  “ that  Ernest  and 
Ada  . . .?” 

She  smiled. 

“ Oh ! well ! ” 

He  started  back  angrily. 

«No!  No!  It  is  impossible!  You  don’t  think  that!  . . . 

No ! No ! ” . , , 

She  put  her  hands  on  his  shoulders  and  rocked  with  laughter. 

“How  dense  you  are,  how  dense,  my  dear!” 

He  shook  her  violently. 

“Don’t  laugh!  Why  do  you  laugh?  You  would  not  laugh 
if  it  were  true.  You  love  Ernest.  ...” 

She  went  on  laughing  and  drew  him  to  her  and  kissed  him. 
' In  spite  of  himself  he  returned  her  kiss.  But  when  he  felt  her 


344 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


lips  on  his,  her  lips,  still  warm  with  his  brother’s  kisses,  he 
flung  her  away  from  him  and  held  her  face  away  from  his 
own:  he  asked: 

“You  knew  it?  It  was  arranged  between  you?” 

She  said  “Yes,”  and  laughed. 

Christophe  did  not  cry  out,  he  made  no  movement  of  anger. 
He  opened  his  mouth  as  though  he  could  not  breathe : he  closed 
his  eyes  and  clutched  at  his  breast  with  his  hands:  his  heart 
was  bursting.  Then  he  lay  down  on  the  ground  with  his  face 
buried  in  his  hands  and  he  was  shaken  by  a crisis  of  disgust 
and  despair  like  a child.  i 

Myrrha,  who  was  not  very  soft-hearted,  was  sorry  for  him: 
involuntarily  she  was  filled  with  motherly  compassion,  and 
leaned  over  him,  and  spoke  affectionately  to  him,  and  tried  to 
make  him  sniff  at  her  smelling-bottle.  But  he  thrust  her  away 
in  horror  and  got  up  so  sharply  that  she  was  afraid.  He  had 
neither  strength  nor  desire  for  revenge.  He  looked  at  her  with  • 
his  face  twisted  with  grief.  i 

“You  drab,”  he  said  in  despair.  “You  do  not  know  the  ' 
harm  you  have  done.  ...”  ^ 

She  tried  to  hold  him  back.  He  fled  through  the  woods,  i 
spitting  out  his  disgust  with  such  ignominy,  with  such  muddy  ■ 
hearts,  with  such  incestuous  sharing  as  that  to  which  they  had  ; 
tried  to  bring  him.  He  wept,  he  trembled : he  sobbed  with  dis-  ! 
gust.  He  was  filled  with  horror,  of  them  all,  of  himself,  of  ; 
his  body  and  soul.  A storm  of  contempt  broke  loose  in  him:  ( 
it  had  long  been  brewing:  sooner  or  later  there  had  to  come  j 
the  reaction  against  the  base  thoughts,  the  degrading  com-  ) 
promises,  the  stale  and  pestilential  atmosphere  in  which  he  had  i 
been  living  for  months:  but  the  need  of  loving,  of  deceiving  ' 
himself  about  the  woman  he  loved,  had  postponed  the  crisis 
as  long  as  possible.  Suddenly  it  burst  upon  him : and  it  was 
better  so.  There  was  a great  gust  of  wind  of  a biting  purity, 
an  icy  breeze  which  swept  away  the  miasma.  Disgust  in  one 
swoop  had  killed  his  love  for  Ada. 

If  Ada  thought  more  firmly  to  establish  her  domination  over 
Christophe  by  such  an  act,  that  proved  once  more  her  gross 
inappreciation  of  her  lover.  Jealousy  which  binds  souls  that 
are  besmirched  could  only  revolt  a nature  like  Christophe’s, 


YOUTH 


345 


young,  proud,  and  pure.  But  what  he  could  not  forgive,  what 
he  never  would  forgive,  was  that  the  betrayal  was  not  the  out- 
come of  passion  in  Ada,  hardly  even  of  one  of  those  absurd 
and  degrading  though  often  irresistible  caprices  to  which  the 
reason  of  a woman  is  sometimes  hard  put  to  it  not  to  surrender, 
jfo — he  understood  now, — it  was  in  her  a secret  desire  to  de- 
grade him,  to  humiliate  him,  to  punish  him  for  his  moral 
resistance,  for  his  inimical  faith,  to  lower  him  to  the  common 
level,  to  bring  him  to  her  feet,  to  prove  to  herself  her  own 
power  for  evil.  And  he  asked  himself  with  horror:  what  is 
this  impulse  towards  dirtiness,  which  is  in  the  majority  of 
human  beings — this  desire  to  besmirch  the  purity  of  themselves 
and  others, — these  swinish  souls,  who  take  a delight  in  rolling 
in  filth,  and  are  happy  when  not  one  inch  of  their  skins  is  left 
clean!  . . . 

Ada  waited  two  days  for  Christophe  to  return  to  her.  Then 
she  began  to  be  anxious,  and  sent  him  a tender  note  in  which 
she  made  no  allusion  to  what  had  happened.  Christophe  did 
not  even  reply.  He  hated  Ada  so  profoundly  that  no  words 
could  express  his  hatred.  He  had  cut  her  out  of  his  life.  She 
no  longer  existed  for  him. 

Christophe  was  free  of  Ada,  but  he  „ was  not  free  of  himself 
In  vain  did  he  try  to  return  into  illusion  and  to  take  up  again, 
the  calm  and  chaste  strength  of  the  past.  We  cannot  return 
to  the  past.  We  have  to  go  onward:  it  is  useless  to  turn  back, 
save  only  to  see  the  places  by  which  we  have  passed,  the  distant 
smoke  from  the  roofs  under  which  we  have  slept,  dying  away 
on  the  horizon  in  the  mists  of  memory.  But  nothing  so  dis- 
tances us  from  the  soul  that  we  had  as  a few  months  of 
passion.  The  road  takes  a sudden  turn : the  country  is  changed  r 
it  is  as  though  we  were  saying  good-bye  for  the  last  time  to 
all  that  we  are  leaving  behind. 

Christophe  could  not  yield  to  it.  He  held  out  his  arms  to 
the  past:  he  strove  desperately  to  bring  to  life  again  the  soul 
that  had  been  his,  lonely  and  resigned.  But  it  was  gone. 
Passion  itself  is  not  so  dangerous  as  the  ruins  that  it  heaps  up 
and  leaves  behind.  In  vain  did  Christophe  not  love,  in  vain — 
for  a moment — did  he  despise  love:  he  bore  the  marks  of  its 


346 


JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 


talons : his  whole  being  was  steeped  in  it : there  was  in  his 
heart  a void  which  must  be  filled.  With  that  terrible  need  of 
tenderness  and  pleasure  which  devours  men  and  women  when 
they  have  once  tasted  it,  some  other  passion  was  needed,  were 
it  only  the  contrary  passion,  the  passion  of  contempt,  of  proud 
purity,  of  faith  in  virtue. — They  were  not  enough,  they  were 
not  enough  to  stay  his  hunger:  they  were  only  the  food  of  a 
moment.  His  life  consisted  of  a succession  of  violent  reactions — 
leaps  from  one  extreme  to  the  other.  Sometimes  he  would 
bend  his  passion  to  rules  inhumanly  ascetic:  not  eating,  drink- 
ing water,  wearing  himself  out  with  walking,  heavy  tasks,  and 
so  not  sleeping,  denying  himself  every  sort  of  pleasure.  Some- 
times he  would  persuade  himself  that  strength  is  the  true 
morality  for  people  like  himself  : and  he  would  plunge  into  the 
quest  of  joy.  In  either  case  he  was  unhappy.  He  could  no 
longer  be  alone.  He  could  no  longer  not  be  alone. 

The  only  thing  that  cQuld^have  saved  him  would  have  been- 
Jo  find  a true  friendship, — Rosa’s  perhaps:  he  could  have  taken ; 
refuge  in  that.  But  the  rupture  was  complete  between  the’ 
two  families.  They  no  longer  met.  Only  once  had  Christophe, 
seen  Rosa.  She  was  just  coming  out  from  Mass.  He  had^ 
hesitated  to  bow  to  her:  and  when  she  saw  him  she  had  made' 
a movement  towards  him:  but  when  he  had  tried  to  go  to  her: 
through  the  stream  of  the  devout  walking  down  the  steps,  she 
had  turned  her  eyes  away:  and  when  he  approached  her  she 
bowed  coldly  and  passed  on.  In  the  girl’s  heart  he  felt  intense,.; 
icy  contempt.  And  he  did  not  feel  that  she  still  loved  him| 
and  would  have  liked  to  tell  him  so : but  she  had  come  to  think' 
of  her  love  as  a fault  and  foolishness:  she  thought  Christophev 
bad  and  corrupt,  and  further  from  her  than  ever.  So  they^ 
were  lost  to  each  other  forever.  And  perhaps  it  was  as  well 
for  both  of  them.  In  spite  of  her  goodness,  she  was  not  near 
enough  4o  life  to  be  able  to  understand  him.  In  spite  of  his 
need  of  affection  and  respect  he  would  have  stifled  in  a com- 
monplace and  confined  existence,  without  joy,  without  sorrow, 
without  air.  They  would  both  have  suffered.  The  unfortunate 
occurrence  which  cut  them  apart  was,  when  all  was  told,  per- 
haps, fortunate  as  often  happens — as  always  happens — to  those 
who  are  strong  and  endure. 


YOUTH 


347 


But  at  the  moment  it  was  a great  sorrow  and  a great  mis- 
fortune for  them.  Especially  for  Christophe.  Such  virtuous 
intolerance,  such  narrowness  of  soul,  which  sometimes  seems 
to  deprive  those  who  have  the  most  of  them  of  all  intelligence, 
and  those  who  are  most  good  of  kindness,  irritated  him,  hurt 
him,  and  flung  him  back  in  protest  into  a freer  life. 

During  his  loafing  with  Ada  in  the  beer  gardens  of  the 
neighborhood  he  had  made  acquaintance  with  several  good  fel- 
lows— Bohemians,  whose  carelessness  and  freedom  of  manners 
had  not  been  altogether  distasteful  to  him.  One  of  them,  Friede- 
mann,  a musician  like  himself,  an  organist,  a man  of  thirty, 
was  not  without  intelligence,  and  was  good  at  his  work,  but 
he  was  incurably  lazy  and  rather  than  make  the  slightest  effort 
to  be  more  than  mediocre,  he  would  have  died  of  hunger,  though 
not,  perhaps,  of  thirst.  He  comforted  himself  in  his  indolence; 
by  speaking  ill  of  those  who  lived  energetically,  God  knows 
why:  and  his  sallies,  rather  heavy  for  the  most  part,  generally 
made-  people  laugh.  Having  more  liberty  than  his  companions, 
he  was  not  afraid, — though  timidly,  and  with  winks  and  nods 
and  suggestive  remarks, — to  sneer  at  those  who  held  positions : 
he  was  even  capable  of  not  having  ready-made  opinions  about 
music,  and  of  having  a sly  fling  at  the  forged  reputations  of 
the  great  men  of  the  day.  He  had  no  mercy  upon  women 
either:  when  he  was  making  his  jokes  he  loved  to  repeat  the 
old  saying  of  some  misogynist  monk  about  them,  and  Chris- 
tophe enjoyed  its  bitterness  just  then  more  than  anybody : 

“ Femina  mors  animae.” 

In  his  state  of  upheaval  Christophe  found  some  distraction 
in  talking  to  Friedemann.  He  judged  him,  he  could  not  long 
take  pleasure  in  this  vulgar  bantering  wit:  his  mockery  and 
perpetual  denial  became  irritating  before  long  and  he  felt  the 
impotence  of  it  all:  but  it  did  soothe  his  exasperation  with  the 
self-sufficient  stupidity  of  the  Philistines.  While  he  heartily 
despised  his  companion,  Christophe  could  not  do  without  him. 
They  were  continually  seen  together  sitting  with  the  unclassed 
and  doubtful  people  of  Friedemann’s  acquaintance,  who  were 
even  more  worthless  than  himself.  They  used  to  play,  and 
harangue,  and  drink  the  whole  evening.  Christophe  would 
sudderdy  wake  up  in  the  midst  of  the  dreadful  smell  of  food' 


548 


JEAN-CHKISTOPHE 


and  tobacco : he  would  look  at  the  people  about  him  with  strange  ; 
eyes : he  would  not  recognize  them : he  would  think  in 
agony : 

" Where  am  I ? Who  are  these  people  ? What  have  I to  do 
with  them  ? ” 

Their  remarks  and  their  laughter  would  make  him  sick.  But 
he  could  not  bring  himself  to  leave  them:  he  was  afraid  of 
going  home  and  of  being  left  alone  face  to  face  with  his  soul, 
his  desires,  and  remorse.  He  was  going  to  the  dogs:  he  knew 
it:  he  was  doing  it  deliberately, — with  cruel  clarity  he  saw  in 
Eriedemann  the  degraded  image  of  what  he  was — of  what  he 
would  be  one  day:  and  he  was  passing  through  a phase  of 
such  disheartenedness  and  disgust  that  instead  of  being  brought 
to  himself  by  such  a menace,  it  actually  brought  him  low. 

He  would  have  gone  to  the  dogs,  if  he  could.  Fortunately, 
like  all  creatures  of  his  kind,  he  had  a spring,  a succor  against ' 
destruction  which  others  do  not  possess : his  strength,  his  in-  ■ 
stinct  for  life,  his  instinct  against  letting  himself  perish,  an : 
Instinct  more  intelligent  than  his  intelligence,  and  stronger  than  i 
his  will.  ‘ And  also,  unknown  to  himself,  he  had  the  strange  ^ 
curiosity  of  the  artist,  that  passionate,  impersonal  quality,  which  i 
is  in  every  creature  really  endowed  with  creative  power.  In' 
vain  did  he  love,  suffer,  give  himself  utterly  to  all  his  passions : , 
he  saw  them.  They  were  in  him  but  they  were  not  himself.. 
A myriad  of  little  souls  moved  obscurely  in  him  towards  a fixed ; 
point  unknown,  yet  certain,  just  like  the  planetary  worlds  ^ 
which  are  drawn  through  space  into  a mysterious  abyss.  That* 
perpetual  state  of  unconscious  action  and  reaction  was  shown  ^ 
especially  in  those  giddy  moments  when  sleep  came  over  his, 
daily  life,  and  from  the  depths  of  sleep  and  the  night  rose  the; 
multiform  face  of  Being  with  its  sphinx-like  gaze.  For  a year 
Christophe  had  been  obsessed  with  dreams  in  which  in  a second 
■of  time  he  felt  clearly  with  perfect  illusion  that  he  was  at  one 
and  the  same  time  several  different  creatures,  often  far  i^moved 
from  each  other  by  countries,  worlds,  centuries.  In  his  waking 
state  Christophe  was  still  under  his  hallucination  and  uneasi- 
ness, though  he  could  not  remember  what  had  caused  it.  It 
was  like  the  weariness  left  by  some  fixed  idea  that  is  gone, 
though  traces  of  it  are  left  and  there  is  no  understanding  it. 


YOUTH 


349 


But  while  his  soul  was  so  troublously  struggling  through  the 
network  of  the  days,  another  soul,  eager  and  serene,  was  watch- 
ing all  his  desperate  efforts.  He  did  not  see  it:  but  it  cast 
over  him  the  reflection  of  its  hidden  light.  That  soul  was  joy- 
ously greedy  to  feel  everything,  to  suffer  everything,  to  observe 
and  understand  men,  women,  the  earth,  life,  desires,  passions, 
thoughts,  even  those  that  were  torturing,  even  those  that  were 
mediocre,  even  those  that  were  vile:  and  it  was  enough  to  lend 
them  a little  of  its  light,  to  save  Christophe  from  destruction. 
It  made  Kim  feel — he  did  not  know  how — that  he  was  not 
altogether  alone.  That  love  of  being  and  of  knowing  everything, 
that  second  soul,  raised  a rampart  against  his  destroying  pas- 
sions. 

But  if  it  was  enough  to  keep  his  head  above  water,  it  did 
not  allow  him  to  climb  out  of  it  unaided.  He  could  not  succeed 
in  seeing  clearly  into  himself,  and  mastering  himself,  and  re- 
gaining possession  of  himself.  Work  was  impossible  for  him. 
He  was  passing  through  an  intellectual  crisis : the  most  fruitful 
of  his  life:  all  his  future  life  was  germinating  in  it:  but  that 
inner  wealth  for  the  time  being  only  showed  itself  in  extrava- 
gance: and  the  immediate  effect  of  such  superabundance  was 
not  different  from  that  of  the  flattest  sterility.  Christophe  was 
submerged  by  his  life.  All  his  powers  had  shot  up  and  grown 
too  fast,  all  at  once,  suddenly.  Only  his  will  had  not  grown 
with  them : and  it  was  dismayed  by  such  a throng  of  monsters. 
His  personality  was  cracking  in  every  part.  Of  this  earth- 
quake, this  inner  cataclysm,  others  saw  nothing.  Christophe 
himself  could  see  only  his  impotence  to  will,  to  create,  to  be. 
Desires,  instincts,  thoughts  issued  one  after  another  like  clouds 
of  sulphur  from  the  Assures  of  a volcano:  and  he  was  forever 
asking  himself:  ^^And  now,  what  will  come  out?  What  will 
become  of  me?  Will  it  always  be  so?  or  is  this  the  end  of  all? 
Shall  I be  nothing,  always  ? 

And  now  there  sprang  up  in  him  his  hereditary  fires,  the 
vices  of  those  who  had  gone  before  him. — He  got  drunk.  He 
would  return  home  smelling  of  wine,  laughing,  in  a state  of 
collapse. 

Poor  Louisa  would  look  at  him,  sigh,  say  nothing,  and  pray. 

But  one  evening  when  he  was  coming  out  of  an  inn  by  the 


350 


JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 


gates  of  the  town  he  saw,  a few  yards  in  front  of  him  on  the 
road,  the  droll  shadow  of  his  uncle  Gottfried,  with  his  pack 
on  his  back.  The  little  man  had  not  been  home  for  months,  ; 
and  his  periods  of  absence  were  growing  longer  and  longer."|i 
Christophe  hailed  him  gleefully.  Gottfried,  bending  under 
his  load,  turned  round:  he  looked  at  Christophe,  who  was  mak-  ' 
ing  extravagant  gestures,  and  sat  down  on  a milestone  to  wait 
for  him.  Christophe  came  up  to  him  with  a beaming  face,  : 
skipping  along,  and  shook  his  uncle’s  hand  with  great  demon- 
strations of  affection.  Gottfried  took  a long  look  at  him  and 
then  he  said: 

“ Good-day,  Melchior.” 

Christophe  thought  his  uncle  had  made  a mistake,  and  bursts 
<out  laughing. 

“The  poor  man  is  breaking  up,”  he  thought;  “he  is  losing 


his  memory.” 

Indeed,  Gottfried  did  look  old,  shriveled,  shrunken,  and  dried: 
his  breathing  came  short  and  painfully.  Christophe  went  on. 
talking.  Gottfried  took  his  pack  on  his  shoulders  again  and! 
went  on  in  silence.  They  went  home  together,  Christophe^ 
gesticulating  and  talking  at  the  top  of  his  voice,  Gottfried  i 
coughing  and  saying  nothing.  And  when  Christophe  questioned' 
him,  Gottfried  still  called  him  Melchior.  And  then  Christophe: 


asked  him:  . - 

“What  do  you  mean  by  calling  me  Melchior?  My  name  iS; 
Christophe,  you  know.  Have  you  forgotten  my  name  ? ” j 

Gottfried  did  not  stop.  He  raised  his  eyes  toward  Christophej 
and  looked  at  him,  shook  his  head,  and  said  coldly:  | 

“ No.  You  are  Melchior : I know  you.”  \ 

Christophe  stopped  dumfounded.  Gottfried  trotted  along :; 
Christophe  followed  him  without  a word.  He  was  sobered. 
As  they  passed  the  door  of  a cafe  he  went  up  to  the  dark  panes 
of  glass,  in  which  the  gas-jets  of  the  entrance  and  the  empty 
streets  were  reflected,  and  he  looked  at  himself : he  recognized 
Melchior.  He  went  home  crushed. 

He  spent  the  night — a night  of  anguish — in  examining  him- 
self, in  soul-searching.  He  understood  now.  Yes:  he  recog- 
nized the  instincts  and  vices  that  had  come  to  light  in  him: 
they  horrifled  him.  He  thought  of  that  dark  watching  by  the 


YOUTH 


351 


body  of  Melchior,  of  all  that  he  had  sworn  to  do,  and,  surveying 
his  life  since  then,  he  knew  that  he  had  failed  to  keep  his  vows. 
What  had  he  done  in  the  year?  What  had  he  done  for  his 
God,  for  his  art,  for  his  soul?  What  had  he  done  for  eternity? 
There  was  not  a day  that  had  not  been  wasted,  botched,  be- 
smirched. Not  a single  piece  of  work,  not  a thought,  not  an 
effort  of  enduring  quality.  A chaos  of  desires  destructive  of 
each  other.  Wind,  dust,  nothing.  . . . What  did  his  intentions 
avail  him?  He  had  fulfilled  none  of  them.  He  had  done 
exactly  the  opposite  of  what  he  had  intended.  He  had  become 
what  he  had  no  wish  to  be:  that  was  the  balance-sheet  of  his 
life. 

He  did  not  go  to  bed.  About  six  in  the  morning  it  was  still 
dark, — he  heard  Gottfried  getting  ready  to  depart. — For  Gott- 
fried had  had  no  intentions  of  staying  on.  As  he  was  passing 
the  town  he  had  come  as  usual  to  embrace  his  sister  and  nephew : 
but  he  had  announced  that  he  would  go  on  next  morning. 

Christophe  went  downstairs.  Gottfried  saw  his  pale  face  and 
his  eyes  hollow  with  a night  of  torment.  He  smiled  fondly 
at  him  and  asked  him  to  go  a little  of  the  way  with  him.  They 
set  out  together  before  dawn.  They  had  no  need  to  talk : they 
understood  each  other.  As  they  passed  the  cemetery  Gottfried 
said : 

“ Shall  we  go  in  ? ” 

When  -he  came  to  the  place  he  never  failed  to  pay  a visit  to 
Jean  Michel  and  Melchior.  Christophe  had  not  been  there  for 
a year.  Gottfried  knelt  by  Melchior’s  grave  and  said : 

“ Let  us  pray  that  they  may  sleep  well  and  not  come  to 
torment  us.” 

His  thought  was  a mixture  of  strange  superstitions  and 
sound  sense : sometimes  it  surprised  Christophe : but  now  it  was 
only  too  clear  to  him.  They  said  no  more  until  they  left  the 
cemetery. 

When  they  had  closed  the  creaking  gate,  and  were  walking 
along  the  wall  through  the  cold  fields,  waking  from  slum- 
ber, by  the  little  path  which  led  them  under  the  cypress 
trees  from  which  the  snow  was  dropping,  Christophe  began  to 
weep. 

“ Oh ! uncle,”  he  said,  “ how  wretched  I am ! ” 


352 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


He  dared  not  speak  of  his  experience  in  love,  from  an 
odd  fear  of  embarrassing  or  hurting  Gottfried : but  he 
spoke  of  his  shame,  his  mediocrity,  his  cowardice,  his  broken 
vows. 

What  am  I to  do,  uncle  ? I have  tried,  I have  struggled : 
and  after  a year  I am  no  further  on  than  before.  Worse:  I 
have  gone  back.  I am  good  for  nothing.  I am  good  for  noth- 
ing ! I have  ruined  my  life.  I am  perjured ! . . 

They  were  walking  up  the  hill  above  the  town.  Gottfried 
said  kindly : 

^^Not  for  the  last  time,  my  boy.  We  do  not  do  what  we 
will  to  do.  We  will  and  we  live:  two  things.  You  must  be 
comforted.  The  great  thing  is,  you  see,  never  to  give  up  willing 
and  living.  The  rest  does  not  depend  on  us.’^ 

Christophe  repeated  desperately: 
have  perjured  myself.^^ 

Do  you  hear  ? ” said  Gottfried. 

(The  cocks  were  crowing  in  all  the  countryside.)  ; 

They,  too,  are  crowing  for  another  who  is  perjured.  They  5 
crow  for  every  one  of  us,  every  morning.’’ 

A day  will  come,”  said  Christophe  bitterly,  when  they  will  ^ 
no  longer  crow  for  me.  ...  A day  to  which  there  is  no  to-  ^ 
morrow.  And  what  shall  I have  made  of  my  life  ? ” 

There  is  always  a to-morrow,”  said  Gottfried. 

But  what  can  one  do,  if  willing  is  no  use  ? ” ; 

Watch  and  pray.”  t 

I do  not  believe.”  i 

Gottfried  smiled.  \ 

You  would  not  be  alive  if  you  did  not  believe.  Every  one : 
believes.  Pray.”  i 

Pray  to  what  ? ” 

Gottfried  pointed  to  the  sun  appearing  on  the  horizon,  red 
and  frozen. 

Be  reverent  before  the  dawning  day.  Do  not  think  of  what 
will  be  in  a year,  or  in  ten  years.  Think  of  to-day.  Leave 
your  theories.  All  theories,  you  see,  even  those  of  virtue,  are 
bad,  foolish,  mischievous.  Do  not  abuse  life.  Live  in  to-day. 
Be  reverent  towards  each  day.  Love  it,  respect  it,  do  not  sully 
it,  do  not  hinder  it  from  coming  to  flower.  Love  it  even  when 


YOUTH 


353 


it  is  gray  and  sad  like  to-day.  Do  not  be  anxious.  See.  It 
is  winter  now.  Everything  is  asleep.  The  good  earth  will 
awake  again.  You  have  only  to  be  good  and  patient  like  the 
earth.  Be  reverent.  Wait.  If  you  are  good,  all  will  go  well. 
If  you  are  not,  if  you  are  weak,  if  you  do  not  succeed,  well, 
3^ou  must  be  happy  in  that.  No  doubt  it  is  the  best  you  can 
do.  So,  then,  why  will?  Why  be  angry  because  of  what  you 
cannot  do?  We  all  have  to  do  what  we  can.  . , . Als  ich  kann/' 

It  is  not  enough,^’  said  Christophe,  making  a face. 

Gottfried  laughed  pleasantly. 

It  is  more  than  anybody  does.  You  are  a vain  fellow.  You 
want  to  be  a hero.  That  is  why  you  do  such  silly  things.  . . . 
A hero!  ...  I donT  quite  know  what  that  is:  but,  you  see, 
I imagine  that  a hero  is  a man  who  does  what  he  can.  The 
others  do  not  do  it.^^ 

Oh ! sighed  Christophe.  Then  what  is  the  good  of 
living?  It  is  not  worth  while.  And  yet  there  are  people  who 
say : ^ He  who  wills  can ! ^ ^^  . . . 

Gottfried  laughed  again  softly. 

Yes  ? . . . Oh ! well,  they  are  liars,  my  friend.  Or  they 
do  not  will  anything  much.  . . ” 

They  had  reached  the  top  of  the  hill.  They  embraced  affec- 
tionately. The  little  peddler  went  on,  treading  wearily.  Chris- 
tophe stayed  there,  lost  in  thought,  and  watched  him  go.  He 
repeated  his  uncle^s  saying : 

Als  ich  kann  (The  best  I can).^^ 

And  he  smiled,  thinking: 

Yes.  . . . All  the  same.  ...  It  is  enough.” 

He  returned  to  the  town.  The  frozen  snow  crackled  under 
his  feet.  The  bitter  winter  wind  made  the  bare  branches 
of  the  stunted  trees  on  the  hill  shiver.  It  reddened  his  cheeks, 
and  made  his  skin  tingle,  and  set  his  blood  racing.  The  red 
roofs  of  the  town  below  were  smiling  under  the  brilliant,  cold 
sun.  The  air  was  strong  and  harsh.  The  frozen  earth  seemed 
to  rejoice  in  bitter  gladness.  And  Christophers  heart  was  like 
that.  He  thought: 

^^I,  too,  shall  wake  again.” 

There  were  still  tears  in  his  eyes.  - He  dried  them  with 
the  back  of  his  hand,  and  laughed  to  see  the  sun  dipping  down 


354 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


behind  a veil  of  mist.  The  clouds,  heavy  with  snow,  were  float- 
ing over  the  town,  lashed  by  the  squall.  He  laughed  at  them. 
The  wind  blew  icily.  ... 

“ Blow,  blow ! ...  Do  what  you  will  with  me.  Bear  me 
with  you!  ...  I know  now  where  I am  going.” 


REVOLT 


i 


I 


SHIFTING  SANDS 

Free  ! He  felt  that  he  was  free ! . . . Free  of  others  and  of 
himself!  The  network  of  passion  in  which  he  had  been  en- 
meshed for  more  than  a year  had  suddenly  been  burst  asunder. 
How?  He  did  not  know.  The  filaments  had  given  before  the 
growth  of  his  being.  It  was  one  of  those  crises  of  growth  in 
which  robust  natures  tear  away  the  dead  casing  of  the  year  that 
is  past,  the  old  soul  in  which  they  are  cramped  and  stified. 

Christophe  breathed  deeply,  without  understanding  what  had 
happened.  An  icy  whirlwind  was  rushing  through  the  great 
gate  of  the  town  as  he  returned  from  taking  Gottfried  on  his 
way.  The  people  were  walking  with  heads  lowered  against  the 
storm.  Girls  going  to  their  work  were  struggling  against  the 
wind  that  blew  against  their  skirts : they  stopped  every  now  and 
then  to  breathe,  with  their  nose  and  cheeks  red,  and  they  looked 
exasperated,  and  as  though  they  wanted  to  cry.  He  thought 
of  that  other  torment  through  which  he  had  passed.  He  looked 
at  the  wintry  sky,  the  town  covered  with  snow,  the  people 
struggling  along  past  him:  he  looked  about  him,  into  himself: 
he  was  no  longer  bound.  He  was  alone!  . . . Alone!  How 
happy  to  be  alone,  to  be  his  own!  What  joy  to  have  escaped 
from  his  bonds,  from  his  torturing  memories,  from  the  hallu- 
cinations of  faces  that  he  loved  or  detested!  What  joy  at 
; last  to  live,  without  being  the  prey  of  life,  to  have  become  his 
own  master!  ... 

He  went  home  white  with  snow.  He  shook  himself  gaily  like 
a dog.  As  he  passed  his  mother,  who  was  sweeping  the  passage, 

I he  lifted  her  up,  giving  little  inarticulate  cries  of  affection 
i such  as  one  makes  to  a tiny  child.  Poor  old  Louisa  struggled 
1 in  her  son’s  arms : she  was  wet  with  the  melting  snow : and  she 
I called  him,  with  a jolly  laugh,  a great  gaby. 

357 


358 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


He  went  up  to  his  room  three  steps  at  a time. — He  could 
hardly  see  himself  in  his  little  mirror  it  was  so  dark.  But 
his  heart  was  glad.  His  room  was  low  and  narrow  and  it  was 
difficult  to  move  in  it,  but  it  was  like  a kingdom  to  him.  He 
locked  the  door  and  laughed  with  pleasure.  At  last  he  was 
finding  himself ! How  long  he  had  been  gone  astray ! He  was  | 
eager  to  plunge  into'  thought  like  a bather  into  water.  It  was 
like  a great  lake  afar  off  melting  into  the  mists  of  blue  and 
gold.  After  a night  of  fever  and  oppressive  heat  he  stood  by 
the  edge  of  it,  with  his  legs  bathed  in  the  freshness  of  the  water, 
his  body  kissed  by  the  wind  of  a summer  morning.  He  plunged 
in  and  swam:  he  knew  not  whither  he  was  going,  and  did 
not  care:  it  was  Joy  to  swim  whithersoever  he  listed.  He  was 
silent,  then  he  laughed,  and  listened  for  the  thousand  thousand 
sounds  of  his  soul:  it  swarmed  with  life.  He  could  make  out 
nothing:  his  head  was  swimming:  he  felt  only  a bewildering  • 
happiness.  He  was  glad  to  feel  in  himself  such  unknown  forces : 
and  indolently  postponing  putting  his  powers  to  the  test  he 
sank  back  into  the  intoxication  of  pride  in  the  inward  flowering,  ■ 
which,  held  back  for  months,  now  burst  forth  like  a sudden  ^ 
spring.  ! 

His  mother  called  him  to  breakfast.  He  went  down:  he  ; 
was  giddy  and  light-headed  as  though  he  had  spent  a day  in 
the  open  air : but  there  was  such  a radiance  of  Joy  in  him  that 
Louisa  asked  what  was  the  matter.  He  made  no  reply:  he  , 
seized  her  by  the  waist  and  forced  her  to  dance  with  him  round  ' 
the  table  on  which  the  tureen  was  steaming.  Out  of  breath  j 
Louisa  cried  that  he  was  mad : then  she  clasped  her  hands.  * 
“Dear  God!”  she  said  anxiously.  “Sure,  he  is  in  love 
again ! ” i 

Christophe  roared  with  laughter.  He  hurled  his  napkin  into 
the  air. 

“In  love?  . . .”  he  cried.  “Oh!  Lord!  ...  but  no!  I’ve 
had  enough ! You  can  be  easy  on  that  score.  That  is  done, 
done,  forever ! . . . Ouf ! ” 

He  drank  a glassful  of  water. 

Louisa  looked  at  him,  reassured,  wagged  her  head,  and  smiled. 

“ That’s  a drunkard’s  pledge,”  she  said.  “ It  won’t  last  until 
to-night.” 


EEVOLT 


35& 


“ Then  the  day  is  clear  gain  ” he  replied  good-humoredly. 

" Oh,  yes ! ” she  said.  “ But  what  has  made  you  so 
happy  ? ” 

“ I am  happy.  That  is  all.” 

Sitting  opposite  her  with  his  elbows  on  the  table  he  tried  to 
tell  her  all  that  he  was  going  to  do.  She  listened  with  kindly 
skepticism  and  gently  pointed  out  that  his  soup  was  going  cold. 
He  knew  that  she  did  not  hear  what  he  was  saying : but  he  did 
not  care : he  was  talking  for  his  own  satisfaction. 

They  looked  at  each  other  smiling:  he  talking:  she  hardly 
listening.  Although  she  was  proud  of  her  son  she  attached  no 
great  importance  to  his  artistic  projects:  she  was  thinking: 
“He  is  happy:  that  matters  most.” — While  he  was  growing 
more  and  more  excited  with  his  discourse  he  watched  his 
mother’s  dear  face,  with  her  black  shawl  tightly  tied  round 
her  head,  her  white  hair,  her  young  eyes  that  devoured  him 
lovingly,  her  sweet  and  tranquil  kindliness.  He  knew  exactly 
what  she  was  thinking.  He  said  to  her  jokingly : 

“ It  is  all  one  to  you,  eh  ? You  don’t  care  about  what  I’m 
telling  you  ? ” 

She  protested  weakly: 

“ Oh,  no ! Oh,  no ! ” 

He  kissed  her. 

“ Oh,  yes ! Oh,  yes ! You  need  not  defend  yourself.  You 
are  right.  Only  love  me.  There  is  no  need  to  understand  me — 
either  for  you  or  for  anybody  else.  I do  not  need  anybody 
or  anything  now:  I have  everything  in  myself.  . . .” 

“ Oh ! ” said  Louisa.  “ Another  maggot  in  his  brain ! . . . 
But  if  he  must  have  one  I prefer  this  to  the  other.” 

What  sweet  happiness  to  float  on  the  surface  of  the  lake  of  his 
thoughts!  . . . Lying  in  the  bottom  of  a boat  with  his  body 
bathed  in  sun,  his  face  kissed  by  the  light  fresh  wind  that 
skims  over  the  face  of  the  waters,  he  goes  to  sleep : he  is  swung 
by  threads  from  the  sky.  Under  his  body  lying  at  full  length, 
under  the  rocking  boat  he  feels  the  deep,  swelling  water:  his 
hand  dips  into  it.  He  rises:  and  with  his  chin  on  the  edge 
of  the  boat  he  watches  the  water  flowing  by  as  he  did  when 
he  was  a child.  He  sees  the  reflection  of  strange  creatures 


360 


JEAN-CHKISTOPHE 


darting  by  like  lightning.  . . . More,  and  yet  more.  . . . They 
are  never  the  same.  He  laughs  at  the  fantastic  spectacle  that 
is  unfolded  within  him : he  laughs  at  his  own  thoughts ; he  has 
no  need  to  catch  and  hold  them.  Select?  Why  select  among 
so  many  thousands  of  dreams?  There  is  plenty  of  time!  . . . 
Later  on ! ...  He  has  only  to  throw  out  a line  at  will  to  draw 
in  the  monsters  whom  he  sees  gleaming  in  the  water.  He  lets 
them  pass.  . . . Later  on!  . . . 

The  boat  floats  on  at  the  whim  of  the  warm  wind  and  the 
insentient  stream.  All  is  soft,  sun,  and  silence. 

At  last  languidly  he  throws  out  his  line.  Leaning  out  over 
the  lapping  water  he  follows  it  with  his  eyes  until  it  disappears. 
After  a few  moments  of  torpor  he  draws  it  in  slowly:  as  he 
draws  it  in  it  becomes  heavier:  Just  as  he  is  about  to  fish  it 
out  of  the  water  he  stops  to  take  breath.  He  knows  that  he 
has  his  prey:  he  does  not  know  what  it  is:  he  prolongs  the 
pleasure  of  expectancy. 

At  last  he  makes  up  his  mind:  fish  with  gleaming,  many- 
colored  scales  appear  from  the  water:  they  writhe  like  a nest 
of  snakes.  He  looks  at  them  curiously,  he  stirs  them  with  his 
finger:  but  hardly  has  he  drawn  them  from  the  water  than 
their  colors  fade  and  they  slip  between  his  fingers.  He  throws 
them  back  into  the  water  and  begins  to  fish  for  others.  He 
is  more  eager  to  see  one  after  another  all  the  dreams  stirring 
in  him  than  to  catch  at  any  one  of  them:  they  all  seem  more 
beautiful  to  him  when  they  are  freely  swimming  in  the  trans- 
parent lake.  . . . 

He  caught  all  kinds  of  them,  each  more  extravagant  than 
the  last.  Ideas  had  been  heaped  up  in  him  for  months  and 
he  had  not  drawn  upon  them,  so  that  he  was  bursting  with 
riches.  But  it  was  all  higgledy-piggledy : his  mind  was  a Babel, 
an  old  Jew’s  curiosity  shop  in  which  there  were  piled  up  in 
the  one  room  rare  treasures,  precious  stuffs,  scrap-iron,  and 
rags.  He  could  not  distinguish  their  values : everything  amused 
him.  There  were  thrilling  chords,  colors  which  rang  like  bells, 
harmonies  which  buzzed  like  bees,  melodies  smiling  like  lovers’ 
lips.  There  were  visions  of  the  country,  faces,  passions,  souls, 
characters,  literary  ideas,  metaphysical  ideas.  There  were  great 


EEVOLT 


361 


projects,  vast  and  impossible,  tetralogies,  decalogies,  pretending 
to  depict  everything  in  music,  covering  whole  worlds.  And, 
most  often  there  were  obscure,  flashing  sensations,  called  forth 
by  a trifle,  the  sound  of  a voice,  a man  or  a woman  passing  in 
the  street,  the  pattering  of  rain.  An  inward  rhythm. — Many 
of  these  projects  advanced  no  further  than  their  title:  most 
of  them  were  never  more  than  a note  or  two:  it  was  enough. 
Like  all  very  young  people,  he  thought  he  had  created  what  he 
dreamed  of  creating. 

But  he  was  too  keenly  alive  to  be  satisfied  for  long  with  such 
fantasies.  He  wearied  of  an  illusory  possession:  he  wished  to 
seize  his  dreams. — How  to  begin?  They  seemed  to  him  all 
equally  important.  He  turned  and  turned  them:  he  rejected 
them,  he  took  them  up  again.  ...  No,  he  never  took  them  up 
again:  they  were  no  longer  the  same,  they  were  never  to  be 
caught  twice:  they  were  always  changing:  they  changed  in  his 
hands,  under  his  eyes,  while  he  was  watching  them.  He  must 
make  haste:  he  could  not:  he  was  appalled  by  the  slowness 
with  which  he  worked.  He  would  have  liked  to  do  everything 
in  one  day,  and  he  found  it  horribly  difficult  to  complete  the 
smallest  thing.  His  dreams  were  passing  and  he  was  passing 
himself : while  he  was  doing  one  thing  it  worried  him  not  to 
be  doing  another.  It  was  as  though  it  was  enough  to  have 
chosen  one  of  his  fine  subjects  for  it  to  lose  all  interest  for 
him.  And  so  all  his  riches  availed  him  nothing.  His  thoughts 
had  life  only  on  condition  that  he  did  not  tamper  with 
them:  everything  that  he  succeeded  in  doing  was  still-born. 
It  was  the  torment  of  Tantalus:  within  reach  were  fruits  that 
became  stones  as  soon  as  he  plucked  them:  near  his  lips  was 
a clear  stream  which  sank  away  whenever  he  bent  down  to 
drink. 

To  slake  his  thirst  he  tried  to  sip  at  the  springs  that  he  had 
conquered,  his  old  compositions.  . . . Loathsome  in  taste ! At 
the  first  gulp  he  spat  it  out  again,  cursing.  What ! That  tepid 
water,  that  insipid  music,  was  that  his  music  ? — He  read  through 
all  his  compositions:  he  was  horrified:  he  understood  not  a 
1 note  of  them,  he  could  not  even  understand  how  he  had  come 
to  write  them.  He  blushed.  Once  after  reading  through  a 


362 


JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 


page  more  foolish  than  the  rest  he  turned  round  to  make  sure 
that  there  was  nobody  in  the  room,  and  then  he  went  and  hid 
his  face  in  his  pillow  like  a child  ashamed.  Sometimes  they 
seemed  to  him  so  preposterously  silly  that  they  were  quite  funny, 
and  he  forgot  that  they  were  his  own.  . . . 

“What  an  idiot!”  he  would  cry,  rocking  with  laughter. 

But  nothing  touched  him  more  than  those  compositions  in 
which  he  had  set  out  to  express  his  own  passionate  feelings : the 
sorrows  and  joys  of  love.  Then  he  would  bound  in  his  chair 
as  tlrough  a fly  had  stung  him:  he  would  thump  on  the  table, 
beat  his  head,  and  roar  angrily:  he  would  coarsely  apostrophize 
himself : he  would  vow  himself  to  be  a swine,  trebly  a scoundrel, 
a clod,  and  a clown — a whole  litany  of  denunciation.  In  the  i 
end  he  would  go  and  stand  before  his  mirror,  red  with  shouting, 
and  then  he  would  take  hold  of  his  chin  and  say: 

“ Look,  look,  you  scurvy  knave,  look  at  the  ass-face  that  is 
yours!  I’ll  teach  you  to  lie,  you  blackguard!  Water,  sir,  ■ 
water.”  ; 

He  would  plunge  his  face  into  his  basin,  and  hold  it  under  ’ 
water  until  he  was  like  to  choke.  When  he  drew  himself  up,  , 
scarlet,  with  his  eyes  starting  from  his  head,  snorting  like  a t 
seal,  he  would  rush  to  his  table,  without  bothering  to  sponge  ; 
away  the  water  trickling  down  him:  he  would  seize  the  un-  ; 
happy  compositions,  angrily  tear  them  in  pieces,  growling:  ^ 

“There,  you  beast!  . . . There,  there,  there!  ...”  | 

Then  he  would  recover.  I ( 

What  exasperated  him  most  in  his  compositions  was  their  un-  j 
truth.  Not  a spark  of  feeling  in  them.  A phraseology  got  ] 
by  heart,  a schoolboy’s  rhetoric:  he  spoke  of  love  like  a blind  f 
man  of  color:  he  spoke  of  it  from  hearsay,  only  repeating  the  i 
current  platitudes.  And  it  was  not  only  love : it  was  the  same 
with  all  the  passions,  which  had  been  used  for  themes  and 
declamations.— And  yet  he  had  always  tried  to  be  sincere.— 
But  it  is  not  enough  to  wish  to  be  sincere:  it  is  necessary  to 
have  the  power  to  be  so:  and  how  can  a man  be  so  when  as 
yet  he  knows  nothing  of  life?  What  had  revealed  the  falseness 
of  his  work,  what  had  suddenly  digged  a pit  between  himself  ,, 
and  his  past  was  the  experience  which  he  had  had  during  the  ,^ 
last  six  months  of  life.  He  had  left  fantasy : there  was  now  | 


EEVOLT 


363 


in  him  a real  standard  to  which  he  could  bring  all  the  thoughts 
for  judgment  as  to  their  truth  or  untruth. 

The  disgust  which  his  old  work,  written  without  passion, 
roused  in  him,  made  him  decide  with  his  usual  exaggeration 
that  he  would  write  no  more  until  he  was  forced  to  write  by 
some  passionate  need;  and  leaving  the  pursuit  of  his  ideas  at 
that,  he  swore  that  he  would  renounce  music  forever,  unless 
creation  were  imposed  upon  him  in  a thunderclap. 

He  made  this  resolve  because  he  knew  quite  well  that  the 
storm  was  coming. 

Thunder  falls  when  it  will,  and  where  it  will.  But  there 
are  peaks  which  attract  it.  Certain  places — certain  souls — 
breed  storms:  they  create  them,  or  draw  them  from  all  points 
of  the  horizon:  and  certain  ages  of  life,  like  certain  months 
of  the  year,  are  so  saturated  with  electricity,  that  thunderstorms 
i are  produced  in  them, — ^if  not  at  will — at  any  rate  when  they 
! are  expected. 

The  whole  being  of  a man  is  taut  for  it.  Often  the  storm 
lies  brooding  for  days  and  days.  The  pale  sky  is  hung  with 
burning,  fleecy  clouds.  No  wind  stirs.  The  still  air  ferments, 
and  seems  to  boil.  The  earth  lies  in  a stupor : no  sound  comes 
from  it.  The  brain  hums  feverishly:  all  nature  awaits  the 
explosion  of  the  gathering  forces,  the  thud  of  the  hammer  which 
is  slowly  rising  to  fall  back  suddenly  on  the  anvil  of  the  clouds. 
Dark,  warm  shadows  pass : a fiery  wind  rises  through  the  body, 
the  nerves  quiver  like  leaves.  . . . Then  silence  falls  again. 
The  sky  goes  on  gathering  thunder. 

In  such  expectancy  there  is  voluptuous  anguish.  In  spite 
of  the  discomfort  that  weighs  so  heavily  upon  you,  you  feel 
in  your  veins  the  fire  which  is  consuming  the  universe.  The 
soul  surfeited  boils  in  the  furnace,  like  wine  in  a vat.  Thou- 
sands of  germs  of  life  and  death  are  in  labor  in  it.  What  will 
issue  from  it?  The  soul  knows  not.  Like  a woman  with  child, 
it  is  silent : it  gazes  in  upon  itself ; it  listens  anxiously  for  the 
stirring  in  its  womb,  and  thinks : “ What  will  be  born  of 
me?”  ... 

Sometimes  such  waiting  is  in  vain.  The  storm  passes  without 
breaking : but  you  \^ake  heavy,  cheated,  enervated,  disheartened. 


364 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


But  it  is  only  postponed:  the  storm  will  break:  if  not  to-day, 
then  to-morrow:  the  longer  it  is  delayed,  the  more  violent  will 

it  be.  . . . 

Now  it  comes ! . . . The  clouds  have  come  up  from  all  corners  ! 
of  the  souh  Thick  masses,  blue  and  black,  torn  by  the  frantic 
darting  of  the  lightning:  they  advance  heavily,  drunkenly, 
darkening  the  soul’s  horizon,  blotting  out  light.  An  hour  of 
madness!  . . . The  exasperated  Elements,  let  loose  from  the 
cage  in  which  they  are  held  bound  by  the  Laws  which  hold 
the  balance  between  the  mind  and  the  existence  of  things, 
reign,  formless  and  colossal,  in  the  night  of  consciousness.  The 
soul  is  in  agony.  There  is  no  longer  the  will  to  live.  There 
is  only  longing  for  the  end,  for  the  deliverance  of  death.  . . . 

And  suddenly  there  is  lightning! 

Christophe  shouted  for  joy. 

/ Joy,  furious  joy,  the  sun  that  lights  up  all  that  is  and  will 
^ be,  the  godlike  joy  of  creation!  There  is  no  joy  but  in  crea-  ^ 
tion.  There  are  no  living  beings  but  those  who  create.  All 
the  rest  are  shadows,  hovering  over  the  earth,  strangers  to  life. 
All  the  joys  of  life  are  the  joys  of  creation : love,  genius,  action, 
— quickened  by  flames  issuing  from  one  and  the  same  fire.  ' 
Even  those  who  cannot  find  a place  by  the  great  fireside:  the 
ambitious,  the  egoists,  the  sterile  sensualists,— try  to  gain 
warmth  in  the  pale  reflections  of  its  light.  ; 

To  create  in  the  region  of  the  body,  or  in  the  region  of  the  ^ 
mind,  is  to  issue  from  the  prison  of  the  body : it  is  to  ride  upon  i 
the  storm  of  life : it  is  to  be  He  who  Is.  To  create  is  to  triumph 
over  death.  t 

Wretched  is  the  sterile  creature,  that  man  or  that  woman  •; 
who  remains  alone  and  lost  upon  the  earth,  scanning  their 
withered  bodies,  and  the  sight  of  themselves  from  which  no  flame 
of  life  will  ever  leap ! Wretched  is  the  soul  that  does  not  feel 
its  own  fruitfulness,  and  know  itself  to  he  big  with  life  and 
love,  as  a tree  with  blossom  in  the  spring ! The  world  may  heap 
honors  and  benefits  upon  such  a soul : it  does  but  crown  a corpse. 

When  Christophe  was  struck  by  the  flash  of  lightning,  an 
electric  fluid  coursed  through  his  body:  he  trembled  under  the 


EEVOLT 


365 


shock.  It  was  as  though  on  the  high  seas,  in  the  dark  night, 
he  had  suddenly  sighted  land.  Or  it  was  as  though  in  a crowd 
he  had  gazed  into  two  eyes  saluting  him.  Often  it  would  happen 
to  him  after  hours  of  prostration  when  his  mind  was  leaping 
desperately  through  the  void.  But  more  often  still  it  came 
in  moments  when  he  was  thinking  of  something  else,  talking 
to  his  mother,  or  walking  through  the  streets.  If  he  were  in 
the  street  a certain  human  respect  kept  him  from  too  loudly 
demonstrating  his  joy.  But  if  he  were  at  home  nothing  could 
keep  him  back.  He  would  stamp.  He  would  sound  a blare 
of  triumph:  his  mother  knew  that  well,  and  she  had  come  to 
know  what  it  meant.  She  used  to  tell  Christophe  that  he  was 
like  a hen  that  has  laid  an  egg. 

He  was  permeated  with  his  musical  imagination.  Sometimes 
it  took  shape  in  an  isolated  phrase  complete  in  itself : more  often 
it  would  appear  as  a nebula  enveloping  a whole  work:  the 
structure  of  the  work,  its  general  lines,  could  be  perceived 
through  a veil,  torn  asunder  here  and  there  by  dazzling  phrases 
which  stood  out  from  the  darkness  with  the  clarity  of  sculp- 
ture. It  was  only  a flash:  sometimes  others  would  come  in 
quick  succession:  each  lit  up  other  corners  of  the  night.  But 
usually,  the  capricious  force  having  once  shown  itself  un- 
expectedly, would  disappear  again  for  several  days  into  its 
mysterious  retreats,  leaving  behind  it  a luminous  ray. 

This  delight  in  inspiration  was  so  vivid  that  Christophe 
was  disgusted  by  everything  else.  The  experienced  artist  knows 
that  inspiration  is  rare  and  that  intelligence  is  left  to  com- 
plete the  work  of  intuition:  he  puts  his  ideas  under  the  press 
and  squeezes  out  of  them  the  last  drop  of  the  divine  juices  that 
are  in  them — (and  if  need  be  sometimes  he  does  not  shrink 
from  diluting  them  with  clear  water). — Christophe  was  too 
young  and  too  sure  of  himself  not  to  despise  such  contemptible 
practices.  He  dreamed  impossibly  of  producing  nothing  thati..-' 
was  not  absolutely  spontaneous.  If  he  had  not  been  deliberately 
: blind  he  would  certamly  have  seen  the  absurdity  of  his  aims. 

! No  doubt  he  was  at  that  time  in  a period  of  inward  abundance 
i in  which  there  was  no  gap,  no  chink,  through  which  boredom 
or  emptiness  could  creep.  Everything  served  as  an  excuse  to 
his  inexhaustible  fecundity:  everything  that  his  eyes  saw  or 


366  JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


his  ears  heard,  everything  with  which  he  came  in  contact  in  | 
his  daily  life : every  look,  every  word,  brought  forth  a crop  of 
dreams.  In  the  boundless  heaven  of  his  thoughts  he  saw  circling 
millions  of  milky  stars,  rivers  of  living  light. — And  yet,  even 
then,  there  were  moments  when  everything  was  suddenly  blotted 
out.  And  although  the  night  could  not  endure,  although  he 
had  hardly  time  to  suffer  from  these  long  silences  of  his  soul, 
he  did  not  escape  a secret  terror  of  that  unknown  power  which 
came  upon  him,  left  him,  came  again,  and  disappeared.  . . . 
How  long,  this  time?  Would  it  ever  come  again? — His  pride 
rejected  that  thought  and  said : “ This  force  is  myself.  When 
it  ceases  to  be,  I shall  cease  to  be:  I shall  kill  myself.”— He 
never  ceased  to  tremble : but  it  was  only  another  delight. 

But,  if,  for  the  moment,  there  was  no  danger  of  the  spring 
running  dry,  Christophe  was  able  already  to  perceive  that  it 
was  never  enough  to  fertilize  a complete  work.  Ideas  almost 
always  appeared  rawly:  he  had  painfully  to  dig  them  out  of* 
the  ore.  And  always  they  appeared  without  any  sort  of  se- ; 
quence,  and  by  fits  and  starts : to  unite  them  he  had  to  bring ! 
to  bear  on  them  an  element  of  reflection  and  deliberation  and 
cold  will,  which  fashioned  them  into  new  form.  Christophe; 
was  too  much  of  an  artist  not  to  do  so:  but  he  would  not  accept 
it : he  forced  himself  to  believe  that  he  did  no  more  than  tran- ! 
scribe  what  was  within  himself,  while  he  was  always  compelled, 
more  or  less  to  transform  it  so  as  to,  make  it  intelligible. — ; 
More  than  that:  sometimes  he  would  absolutely  forge  a mean-- 
ing  for  it.  However  violently  the  musical  idea  might  comoj 
upon  him  it  would  often  have  been  impossible  for  him  to  say'! 
what  it  meant.  It  would  come  surging  up  from  the  depths  of  ' 
life,  from  far  beyond  the  limits  of  consciousness:  and  in  that; 
absolutely  pure  Force,  which  eluded  common  rhythms,  con- 
sciousness could  never  recognize  in  it  any  of  the  motives  which 
stirred  in  it,  none  of  the  human  feelings  which  it  defines  and 
classifies:  joys,  sorrows,  they  were  all  merged  in  one  single 
passion  which  was  unintelligible,  because  it  was  above  the  in- 
telligence. And  yet,  whether  it  understood  or  no,  the  intelli- 
gence needed  to  give  a name  to  this  form,  to  bind  it  down  to 
one  or  other  of  the  structures  of  logic,  which  man  is  forever 
building  indefatigably  in  the  hive  of  his  brain. 


I 


i 


KEVOLT 


So  Christophe  convinced  himself — ^l]e  wished  to  do  so — thi 
the  obscure  power  that  moved  him  had  an  exact  meaning, 
that  its  meaning  was  in  accordance  with  his  will.  His  free 
instinct,  risen  from  the  unconscious  depths,  was  willy-nilly 
forced  to  plod  on  under  the  yoke  of  reason  with  perfectly  clear 
ideas  which  had  nothing  at  all  in  common  with  it.  And  work 
so  produced  was  no  more  than  a lying  juxtaposition  of  one 
of  those  great  subjects  that  Christophers  mind  had  marked 
out  for  itself,  and  those  wild  forces  which  had  an  altogether 
different  meaning  unknown  to  himself. 


He  groped  his  way,  head  down,  borne  on  by  the  contradic- 
tory forces  warring  in  him,  and  hurling  into  his  incoherent 
works  a fiery  and  strong  quality  of  life  which  he  could 
not  express,  though  he  was  joyously  and  proudly  conscious 
of  it. 

The  consciousness  of  his  new  vigor  made  him  able  for  the 
first  time  to  envisage  squarely  everything  about  him,  everything 
that  he  had  been  taught  to  honor,  everything  that  he  had  re- 
spected without  question:  and  he  judged  it  all  with  insolent 
freedom.  The  veil  was  rent : he  saw  the  German  lie. 

Every  race,  every  art  has  its  hypocrisy.  The  world  is  fed 
with  a little  truth  and  many  lies.  The  human  mind  is  feeble: 
pure  truth  agrees  with  it  but  ill:  its  religion,  its  morality,  its 
states,  its  poets,  its  artists,  must  all  be  presented  to  it  swathed 
in  lies.  These  lies  are  adapted  to  the  mind  of  each  race : they 
vary  from  one  to  the  other:  it  is  they  that  make  it  so  difficult 
for  nations  to  understand  each  other,  and  so  easy  for  them 
to  despise  each  other.  Truth  is  the  same  for  all  of  tis:  but 
every  nation  has  its  own  lie,  which  it  calls  its  idealism. : every 
creature  therein  breathes  it  from  birth  to  death:  it  has  become 
a condition  of  life:  there  are  only  a few  men  of  genius  who  can 
break  free  from  it  through  heroic  moments  of  crisis,  when 
they  are  alone  in  the  free  world  of  their  thoughts. 

It  was  a trivial  thing  which  suddenly  revealed  to  Christophe 
the  lie  of  German  art.  It  was  not  because  it  had  not  always 
been  visible  that  he  had  not  seen  it:  he  was  not  near  it,  he 
had  not  recoiled  from  it.  Now  the  mountain  appeared  to  his 
gaze  because  he  had  moved  away  from  it. 


I 


JEAN-CHKISTOPHE 


He  w&s  &t  9-  concert  of  tlio  Std^dtiscJic  Towtihallc*  Tlie 
concert  was  given  in  a large  hall  occupied  by  ten  or  twelve 
rows  of  little  tables— about  two  or  three  hundred  of  them. 
At  the  end  of  the  room  was  a stage  where  the  orchestra  was 
sitting.  All  round  Christophe  were  officers  dressed  up  in  their 
long,  dark  coats,— with  broad,  shaven  faces,  red,  serious,  and 
commonplace ; women  talking  and  laughing  noisily,  ostenta- 
tiously at  their  ease:  jolly  little  girls  smiling  and  showing  all 
their  teeth:  and  large  men  hidden  behind  their  beards  and 
spectacles,  looking  like  kindly  spiders  with  round  eyes.  They 
got  up  with  every  fresh  glass  to  drink  a toast : they  did  this 
almost  religiously : their  faces,  their  voices  changed : it  was  as 
though  they  were  saying  Mass:  they  offered  each  other  the 
libations,  they  drank  of  the  chalice  with  a mixture  of  solemnity 
and  buffoonery.  The  music  was  drowned  under  the  conversation 
and  the  clinking  of  glasses.  And  yet  everybody  was  trying  to. 
talk  and  eat  quietly.  The  Herr  Konzertmeister,  a tall,  bent  old. 
man,  with  a white  beard  hanging  like  a tail  froni  his  chin,’ 
and  a long  aquiline  nose,  with  spectacles,  looked  like  a phil-- 
ologist. — All  these  types  were  familiar  to  Christophe.  But  on^ 
that  day  he  had  an  inclination — ^he  did  not  know  why  to| 
see  them  as  caricatures.  There  are  days  like  that  when,; 
for  no  apparent  reason,  the  grotesque  in  people  and  thingsj 
which  in  ordinary  life  passes  unnoticed,  suddenly  leaps  intoj 


view. 


The  programme  of  the  music  included  the  Egmont  overture,j| 
a valse  of  Waldteufel,  Tannhduser’s  Pilgrimage  to  Rome,  the" 
overture  to  the  Merry  Wives  of  Nicolai,  the  religious  march  oi 
Athalie,  and  a fantasy  on  the  North  Star.  The  orchestra  playedj 
the  Beethoven  overture  correctly,  and  the  valse  deliciously.  Dur-, 
ing  the  Pilgrimage  of  Tannhduser,  the  uncorking  of  bottles 
was  heard.  A big  man  sitting  at  the  table  next  to  Christophe 
beat  time  to  the  Merry  Wives  by  imitating  Falstaff.  A stout 
old  lady,  in  a pale  blue  dress,  with  a white  belt,  golden  pince- 
nez  on  her  flat  nose,  red  arms,  and  an  enormous  waist,  sang 
in  a loud  voice  Lieder  of  Schumann  and  Brahms.  She  raised 
her  eyebrows,  made  eyes  at  the  wings,  smiled  with  a smile  thal 
seemed  to  curdle  on  her  moon-face,  made  exaggerated  gestures 
which  must  certainly  have  called  to  mind  the  cafe-concert  bul 


EEVOLT 


369 


for  the  majestic  honesty  which  shone  in  her:  this  mother  of  a 
family  played  the  part  of  the  giddy  girl,  youth,  passion:  and 
Schumann’s  poetry  had  a faint  smack  of  the  nursery.  The 
audience  was  in  ecstasies. — But  they  grew  solemn  and  attentive 
when  there  appeared  the  Choral  Society  of  the  Germans  of 
the  South  {Suddeutschen  Manner  Liedertafel) , who  alternately 
cooed  and  roared  part  songs  full  of  feeling.  There  were  forty, 
and  they  sang  four  parts:  it  seemed  as  though  they  had  set 
themselves  to  free  their  execution  of  every  trace  of  style  that 
could  properly  be  called  choral : a hotch-potch  of  little  melodious 
effects,  little  timid  puling  shades  of  sound,  dying  pianissimos, 
with  sudden  swelling,  roaring  crescendos,  like  some  one  beating 
on  an  empty  box : no  breadth  or  balance,  a mawkish  style : it  was 
like  Bottom: 

^^Let  me  play  the  lion.  I will  roar  you  as  gently  as  any 
sucking  dove.  I will  roar  you  as  it  were  a nightingale.” 

Christophe  listened  from  the  beginning  with  growing  amaze- 
ment. There  was  nothing  new  in  it  all  to  him.  He  knew 
these  concerts,  the  orchestra,  the  audience.  But  suddenly  it 
all  seemed  to  him  false.  All  of  it : even  to  what  he  most  loved, 
the  Egmont  overture,  in  which  the  pompous  disorder  and  cor- 
rect agitation  hurt  him  in  that  hour  like  a want  of  frankness. 
No  doubt  it  was  not  Beethoven  or  Schumann  that  he  heard, 
but  their  absurd  interpreters,  their  cud-chewdng  audience  whose 
crass  stupidity  was  spread  about  their  works  like  a heavy  mist. — 
No  matter,  there  was  in  the  works,  even  the  most  beautiful  of 
them,  a disturbing  quality  which  Christophe  had  never  before 
felt. — What  was  it?  He  dared  not  analyze  it,  deeming  it  a 
sacrilege  to  question  his  beloved  masters.  But  in  vain  did  he 
shut  his  eyes  to  it : he  had  seen  it.  And,  in  spite  of  himself, 
he  went  on  seeing  it:  like  the  Vergognosa  at  Pisa  he  looked 
between  his  fingers. 

He  saw  German  art  stripped.  All  of  them — ^the  great  and 
I the  idiots — laid  bare  their  souls  with  a complacent  tenderness. 

! Emotion  overfiowed,  moral  nobility  trickled  down,  their  hearts 
i melted  in  distracted  effusions:  the  sluice  gates  were  opened  to 
!the  fearful  German  tender-heartedness:  it  weakened  the  energy 
I of  the  stronger,  it  drowned  the  weaker  under  its  grayish  waters: 
it  was  a fiood:  in  the  depths  of  it  slept  German  thought.  And 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 

what  thoughts  were  those  of  a Mendelssohn,  a Brahms,  a Schu- 
mann, and,  following  them,  the  whole  legion  of  little  writers 
of  affected  and  tearful  Lieder!  Built  on  sand.  Never  rock. 
Wet  and  shapeless  clay. — It  was  all  so  foolish,  so  childish  often, 
that  Christophe  could  not  believe  that  it  never  occurred  to  the 
audience.  He  looked  about  him : but  he  saw  only  gaping  faces, 
convinced  in  Advance  of  the  beauties  they  were  hearing  and 
the  pleasure  that  they  ought  to  find  in  it.  How  could  they 
admit  their  own  right  to  judge  for  themselves?  They  were 
filled  with  respect  for  these  hallowed  names.  What  did  they 
not  respect?  They  were  respectful  before  their  programmes, 
before  their  glasses,  before  themselves.  It  was  clear  that  men- 
tally they  dubbed  everything  excellent  that  remotely  or  nearly 


concerned  them. 

Christophe  passed  in  review  the  audience  and  the  music  al- 
ternately: the  music  reflected  the  audience,  the  audience  re-  . 
fleeted  the  music.  Christophe  felt  laughter  overcoming  him  . 
and  he  made  faces.  However,  he  controlled  himself.  But  when  j 
the ' Germans  of  the  South  came  and  solemnly  sang  the  Con-  • 
fession  that  reminded  him  of  the  blushes  of  a girl  in  love,  ^ 
Christophe  could  not  contain  himself.  He  shouted  with  laugh-  ; 
ter.  Indignant  cries  of  “ Ssh ! ” were  raised.  His  neighbors  j 
looked  at  him,  scared:  their  honest,  scandalized  faces  filled  him  j 
with  joy:  he  laughed  louder  than  ever,  he  laughed,  he  laughed  ; 
until  he  cried.  Suddenly  the  audience  grew  angry.  They  cried : ; 
"Put  him  out!”  He  got  up,  and  went,  shrugging  his  shoul-  j 
ders,  shaking  with  suppressed  laughter.  His  departure  caused  j 
a scandal.  It  was  the  beginning  of  hostilities  between  Chris-  I 
tophe  and  his  birthplace.  | 


After  that  experience  Christophe  shut  himself  up  and  set  | 
himself  to  read  once  more  the  works  of  the  “ hallowed  ” musi- 
cians.  He  was  appalled  to.  find  that  certain  of  the  masters 
whom  he  loved  most  had  lied.  He  tried  hard  to  doubt  it  at| 
first,  to  believe  that  he  was  mistaken. — But  no,  there  was  no| 
way  out  of  it.  He  was  staggered  by  the  conglomeration  of 
mediocrity,  and  untruth  which  constitutes  the  artistic  treasure 
of  a great  people.  How  many  pages  could  bear  examination! 

Prom  that  time  on  he  could  begin  to  read  other  works,  other 

fv 

f ■ 


EEVOLT 


371 


masters,  who  were  dear  to  him,  only  with  a fluttering  heart. 
. . . Alas ! There  was  some  spell  cast  upon  him : always  there 
was  the  same  discomfiture.  With  some  of  them  his  heart  was 
rent:  it  was  as  though  he  had  lost  a dear  friend,  as  if  he  had 
suddenly  seen  that  a friend  in  whom  he  had  reposed  entire 
confidence  had  been  deceiving  him  for  years.  He  wept  for  it. 
He  did  not  sleep  at  night:  he  could  not  escape  his  torment. 
He  blamed  himself:  perhaps  he  had  lost  his  judgment?  Per- 
haps he  had  become  altogether  an  idiot? — No,  no.  More  than 
ever  he  saw  the  radiant  beauty  of  the  day  and  with  more  fresh- 
ness and  love  than  ever  he  felt  the  generous  abundance  of  life: 
his  heart  was  not  deceiving  him.  . . . 

But  for  a long  time  he  dared  not  approach  those  who  were 
the  best  for  him,  the  purest,  the  Holy  of  Holies.  He  trembled 
at  the  thought  of  bringing  his  faith  in  them  to  the  test.  But 
how  resist  the  pitiless  instinct  of  a brave  and  truthful  soul, 
which  will  go  on  to  the  end,  and  see  things  as  they  are,  whatever 
suffering  may  be  got  in  doing  so  ? — So  he  opened  the  sacred 
works,  he  called  upon  the  last  reserve,  the  imperial  guard.  . . . 
At  the  first  glance  he  saw  ♦that  they  were  no  more  immaculate 
I than  the  others.  He  had  not  the  courage  to  go  on.  Every  now 
i and  then  he  stopped  and  closed  the  book : like  the  son  of  Noah, 

I he  threw  his  cloak  about  his  father’s  nakedness.  . . . 

! Then  he  was  prostrate  in  the  midst  of  all  these  ruins.  He 
i would  rather  have  lost  an  arm,  than  have  tampered  with  his 
blessed  illusions.  In  his  heart  he  mourned.  But  there  was  so 
1 much  sap  in  him,  so  much  reserve  of  life,  that  his  confidence 
; in  art  was  not  shaken.  With  a young  man’s  naive  presump- 
tion he  began  life  again  as  though  no  one  had  ever  lived  it 
' before  him.  Intoxicated  by  his  new  strength,  he  felt — not  with- 
: out  reason,  perhaps — that  with  a very  few  exceptions  there  is 
almost  no  relation  between  living  passion  and  the  expression 
I which  art  has  striven  to  give  to  it.  But  he  was  mistaken  in 
! thinking  himself  more  happy  or  more  true  when  he  expressed 
. it.  As  he  was  filled  with  passion  it  was  easy  for  him  to  dis- 
I cover  it  at  the  back  of  what  he  had  written : but  no  one  else 
: would  have  recognized  it  through  the  imperfect  Vocabulary 
I with  which  he  designated  its  variations.  Many  artists  whom 
he  condemned  were  in  the  same  case.  They  had  had,  and  had 


372  JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 


translated  profound  emotions:  but  the  secret  of  their  language^ 
had  died  with  them. 

Christophe  was  no  psychologist:  he  was  not  bothered  with 
all  these  arguments:  what  was  dead  for  him  had  always  been 
so.  He  revised  his  judgment  of  the  past  with  all  the  confident 
and  fierce  injustice  of  youth.  He  stripped  the  noblest  souls, 
and  had  no  pity  for  their  foibles.  There  were  the  rich  melan- 
choly, the  distinguished  fantasy,  the  kindly  thinking  emptiness 
of  Mendelssohn.  There  were  the  bead-stringing  and  the  affecta- 
tion of  Weber,  his  dryness  of  heart,  his  cerebral  emotion.  There 
was  Liszt,  the  noble  priest,  the  circus  rider,  neo-classical  and 
vagabond,  a mixture  in  equal  doses  of  real  and  false  nobility, 
of  serene  idealism  and  disgusting  virtuosity.  Schubert,  swal- 
lowed up  by  his  sentimentality,  drowned  at  the  bottom  of 
leagues  of  stale,  transparent  water.  The  men  of  the  heroic 
age's,  the  demi-gods,  the  Prophets,  the  Fathers  of  the  Church,  ■ 
were  not  spared.  Even  the  great  Sebastian,  the  man  of  ages,  ^ 
who  bore  in  himself  the  past  and  the  future,— Bach,— was  not  ; 
free  of  untruth,  of  fashionable  folly,  of  school-chattering.  The  . 
man  who  had  seen  God,  the  man  who  lived  in  God,  seemed  ^ 
sometimes  to  Christophe  to  have  had  an  insipid  and  sugared  ] 
religion,  a Jesuitical  style,  rococo.  In  his  cantatas  there  were  ; 
languorous  and  devout  airs — (dialogues  of  the  Soul  coquetting  ; 
with  Jesus)— which  sickened  Christophe:  then  he  seemed  to  ; 
see  chubby  cherubims  with  round  limbs  and  flying  draperies.  , 
And  also  he  had  a feeling  that  the  genial  Cantor  always  wrote  j 
in  a closed  room : his  work  smacked  of  stuffiness : there  was  | 
not  in  his  music  that  brave  outdoor  air  that  was  breathed  j 
in  others,  not  such  great  musicians,  perhaps,  but  greater  men  | 
more  human — than  he.  Like  Beethoven  or  Handel.  What  hurt ; 
him  in  all  of  them,  especially  in  the  classics,  was  their  lack 
of  freedom : almost  all  their  works  were  “ constructed.”  Some- 
times an  emotion  was  filled  out  with  all  the  commonplaces  of 
musical  rhetoric,  sometimes  with  a simple  rhythm,  an  orna- 
mental design,  repeated,  turned  upside  down,  combined  in 
every  conceivable  way  in  a mechanical  fashion.  These  sym- 
metrical and  twaddling  constructions — classical  and  neo-classical 
sonatas  and  symphonies — exasperated  Christophe,  who,  at  that 
time,  was  not  very  sensible  of  the  beauty  of  order,  and  vast 


EEVOLT 


373 

and  well-conceived  plans.  That  seemed  to  him  to  be  rather 
masons^  work  than  musicians\ 

But  he  was  no  less  severe  with  the  romantics.  It  was  a 

strange  thing,  and  he  was  more  surprised  by  it  than  anybody, 

but  no  musicians  irritated  him  more  than  those  who  had  pre- 
tended to  be— and  had  actually  been— the  most  free,  the  most 
spontaneous,  the  least  constructive,— those,  who,  like  Schumann, 
had  poured  drop  by  drop,  minute  by  minute,  into  their  in- 
numerable little  works,  their  whole  life.  He  was  the  more  in- 
dignantly in  revolt  against  them  as  he  recognized  in  them  his 
adolescent  soul  and  all  the  follies  that  he  had  vowed  to  pluck 
out  of  it.  In  truth,  the  candid  Schumann  could  not  be  taxed 
with  falsity;  he  hardly  ever  said  anything  that  he  had  not  felt. 
But  that  was  just  it:  his  example  made  Christophe  under- 
stand that  the  worst  falsity  in  German  art  came  into  it  not 
when  the  artists  tried  to  express  something  which  they  had 
not  felt,  but  rather  when  they  tried  to  express  the  feelings 
which^  they  did  in  fact  feel — feelings  which  were  false.  Music 
is  an  implacable  mirror  of  the  soul.  The  more  a German  musi- 
cian IS  naive  and  in  good  faith,  the  more  he  displays  the 
^weaknesses  of  the  German  soul,  its  uncertain  depths,  its  soft 
[tenderness,  its  want  of  frankness,  its  rather  sly  idealism,  its 
jincapacity  for  seeing  itself,  for  daring  to  come  face  to  face 
with  itself.  That  false  idealism  is  the  secret  sore  even  of  the 
greatest  of  Wagner.  As  he  read  his  works  Christophe  ground 
tais  teeth.  Lohengrin  seemed  to  him  a blatant  lie.  He  loathed 
-he  huxtering  chivalry,  the  hypocritical  mummery,  the*  hero 
Ivithout  fear  and  without  a heart,  the  incarnation  of  cold  and 
iielfish  virtue  admiring  itself  and  most  patently  self-satisfied. 
Te  knew  it  too  well,  he  had  seen  it  in  reality,  the  type  of 
German  Pharisee,  foppish,  impeccable,  and  hard,  bowing  down 
jiefore  its  own  image,  the  divinity  to  which  it  has  no  scruple 
I bout  sacrificing  others.  The  Flying  Dutchman  overwhelmed 
‘iim  with  its  massive,  sentimentality  and  its  gloomy  boredom, 
'he  loves  of  the  barbarous  decadents  of  the  Tetralogy  were  of 
sickening  staleness.  Siegmund  carrying  off  his  sister  sang 
tenor  drawing-room  song.  Siegfried  and  Briinnhilde,  like  re- 
spectable German  married  people,  in  the  Odtterddmmerung  laid 
are  before  each  other,  especially  for  the  benefit  of  the  audience. 


374  JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 

their  pompous  and  voluble  conjugal  passion.  Every  sort  of 
lie  had  arranged  to  meet  in  that  work ; false  idealism,  false 
Christianity,  false  Gothicism,  false  legend,  false  gods,  false 
humans.  Never  did  more  monstrous  convention  appear  than 
in  that  theater  which  was  to  upset  all  the  conventions.  Neither 
eyes  nor  mind,  nor  heart  could  be  deceived  by  it  for  a moment: 
if  they  were,  then  they  must  wish  to  be  so. — They  did  wish  to 
be  so.  Germany  was  delighted  with  that  doting,  childish  art, 
an  art  of  brutes  let  loose,  and  mystic,  namby-pamby  little' 

^ And  Christophe  could  do  nothing : as  soon  as  he  heard  the 
music  he  was  caught  up  like  the  others,  more  than  the  others, 
by  the  flood,  and  the  diabolical  will  of  the  man  who  had  let 
it  loose.  He  laughed,  and  he  trembled,  and  his  cheeks  burned, 
and  he  felt  galloping  armies  rushing  through  him ! And  he 
thought  that  those  who  bore  such  storms  within  themselves, 
' mio-ht  have  all  allowances  made  for  them.  What  cries  of  joy^ 
he^’uttered  when  in  the  hallowed  works  which  he  could  not, 
read  without  trembling  he  felt  once  more  his  old  emotion,, 
ardent  still,  with  nothing  to  tarnish  the  purity  of  what  he 
loved!  These  were  glorious  relics  that  he  saved  from  the  wreck.| 
What  happiness  they  gave  him!  It  seemed  to  him  that  he, 
had  saved  a part  of  himself.  And  was  it  not  himself?  Theso 
great  Germans,  against  whom  he  revolted,  were  they  not  his 
blood,  his  flesh,  his  most  precious  life?  He  was  only  severe 
with  them  because  he  was  severe  with  himself.  Who  loved  them 
better  than  he?  Who  felt  more  than  he  the  goodness  o^ 
Schubert,  the  innocence  of  Haydn,  the  tenderness  of  Mozart/ 
the  great  heroic  heart  of  Beethoven?  Who  more  often  than  he 
took  refuge  in  the  murmuring  of  the  forests  of  Weber,  and  th^ 
cool  shade  of  the  cathedrals  of  John  Sebastian,  raising  against 
the  gray  sky  of  the  North,  above  the  plains  of  Germany,  their 
pile  of  stone,  and  their  gigantic  towers  with  their  sun-tipped 
spires?— But  he  suffered  from  their  lies,  and  he  could  not  forget 
them.  He  attributed  them  to  the  race,  their  greatness  to  them- 
selves He  was  wrong.  Greatness  and  weaknesses  belong  equally 
to  the  race  whose  great,  shifting  thought  flows  like  the  greatest 
river  of  music  and  poetry  at  which  Europe  comes  to  drink.-- 
And  in  what  other  people  would  he  have  found  the  simph 


EEVOLT  375 

purity  which  now  made  it  possible  for  him  to  condemn  it  so 
harshly  ? 

He  had  no  notion  of  that.  With  the  ingratitude  of  a spoiled 
child  he  turned  against  his  mother  the  weapons  which  he  had 
received  from  her.  Later,  later,  he  was  to  feel  all  that  he  owed 
to  her,  and  how  dear  she  was  to  him.  . . . 

But  he  was  in  a phase  of  blind  reaction  against  all  the  idols 
of  his  childhood.  He  was  angry  with  himself  and  with  them 
because  he  had  believed  in  them  absolutely  and  passionately — 
and  it  was  well  that  it  was  so.  There  is  an  age  in  life  when 
we  must  dare  to  be  unjust,  when  we  must  make  a clean  sweep 
of  all  admiration  and  respect  got  at  second-hand,  and  deny 
everything — truth  and  untruth — everything  which  we  have  not 
of  ourselves  known  for  truth.  Through  education,  and  through 
everything  that  he  sees  and  hears  about  him,  a child  absorbs 
so  many  lies  and  blind  follies  mixed  with  the  essential  verities 
of  life,  that  the  first  duty  of  the  adolescent  who  wishes  to 
grow  into  a healthy  man  is  to  sacrifice  everything. 

Christophe  was  passing  through  that  crisis  of  healthy  disgust. 
His  instinct  was  impelling  him  to  eliminate  from  his  life  all 
the  undigested  elements  which  encumbered  it. 

First  of  all  to  go  was  that  sickening  sweet  tenderness  which 
sucked  away  the  soul  of  Germany  like  a damp  and  moldy  river- 
bed. Light!  Light!  A rough,  dry  wind  which  should  sweep 
away  the  miasmas  of  the  swamp,  the  misty  staleness  of  the 
Lieder,  Liedchen,  Liedlein,  as  numerous  as  drops  of  rain  in 
which  inexhaustibly  the  Germanic  Gemut  is  poured  forth:  the 
countless  things  like  Sehnsucht  (Desire),  Heimweh  (Home- 
sickness), Aufschwung  (Soaring),  Trage  (A  question), 
Warum?  (Why?),  an  den  Mond  (To  the  Moon),  an  die  Sterne 
(To  the  Stars),  an  die  Nachtigall  (To  the  Nightingale),  an 
ien  Fruhling  (To  Spring),  an  den  Sonnenschein  (To  Sun- 
shine) : like  Fruhlingslied  (Spring  Song),  Fruhling slust  (De- 
ights  of  Spring),  Fruhlingsgruss  (Hail  to  the  Spring),  Fruh^ 
'ingsfahrt  (A  Spring  Journey),  Fruhlingsnacht  (A  Spring 
flight),  Fruhling siotschaft  (The  Message  of  Spring)  : like 
Stimme  der  Liebe  (The  Voice  of  Love),  Sprache  der  Liebe 
(The  Language  of  Love),  Trauer  der  Liebe  (Lovers  Sorrow), 


376 


JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 


Geist  der  Lteie  (The  Spirit  of  Love),  Fiille  der  Liehe  (The 
Fullness  of  Love) : like  Blumenlied  (The  Song  of  the  Flowers), 
Blumenbrief  (The  Letter  of  the  Flowers),  Blumengruss  (Flow- 
ers’ Greeting)  : like  Herzeleid  (Heart  Pangs),  Mein  Herz  ist 
schwer  (My  Heart  is  Heavy),  Mein  Herz  ist  betrilbt  (My 
Heart  is  Troubled),  Mein  Aug’  ist  triib  (My  Eye  is  Heavy) : 
like  the  candid  and  silly  dialogues  with  the  Bdselein  (The  Little 
Rose),  with  the  brook,  with  the  turtle  dove,  with  the  lark:  like  | 
those  idiotic  questions:  “If  the  briar  could  have  no  thorns?” — i 
“Is  an  old  husband  like  a lark  who  has  built  a nest?” — “Is 
she  newly  plighted  ? ” : the  whole  deluge  of  stale  tenderness, 
stale  emotion,  stale  melancholy,  stale  poetry.  . . . How  many 
lovely  things  profaned,  rare  things,  used  in  season  or  out! 
For  the  worst  of  it  was  that  it  was  all  useless : a habit  of  un- 
dressing their  hearts  in  public,  a fond  and  foolish  propensity 
of  the  honest  people  of  Germany  for  plunging  loudly  into  confi-“ 
dences.  With  nothing  to  say  they  were  always  talking ! Would- 
their  chatter  never  cease? — As  well  bid  frogs  in  a pond  be| 
. silent.  * 

It  was  in  the  expression  of  love  that  Christophe  was  most, 
rawly  conscious  of  untruth:  for  he  was  in  a positiQla  "to  com-; 
pare  it  with  the  reality.-^  The  conventional  love  songs,  lacrymose: 
' and  proper,  contained  nothing  like  the  desires  of  man  or  the 
heart  of  woman.  And  yet  the  people  who  had  written  them 
, must  have  loved  at  least  once  in  their  lives!  Was  it  possible 


that  they  could  have  loved  like  that?  vNo,  no,  they  had  lied,, 
as  they  always  did,  they  had  lied  to  themselves : they  had  triedj 
to  idealize  themselves.  . . . Idealism ! That  meant  that  they, 
were  afraid  of  looking  at  life  squarely,  were  incapable  of  seeing? 
things  like  a man,  as  they  are. — Everywhere  the  same  timidity,; 
the  same  lack  of  manly  frankness.  Everywhere  the  same  chilly 
enthusiasm,  the  same  pompous  lying  solemnity,  in  their  patriot- 
ism, in  their  drinking,  in  their  religion.  The  Trinklieder, 
(Drinking  Songs)  were  prosopopeia  to  wine  and  the  bowl:  Dw/ 
herrlich  Glas  . . ("Thou,  noble  glass  . . .”).  Faith— the 
one  thing  in  the  world  which  should  be  spontaneous,  springing^ 
from  the  soul  like  an  unexpected  sudden  stream— was  a manu^ 
factured  article,  a commodity  of  trade.  Their  patriotic  song^ 
were  made  for  docile  flocks  of  sheep  basking  in  unison.  . . ^ • 


EEVOLT 


377 


Shout,  then ! — What ! Must  you  go  on  lying — idealizing '' 

< — till  you  are  surfeited,  till  it  brings  you  to  slaughter  and  mad- 
ness! ... 

Christophe  ended  by  hating  all  idealism.  He  preferred  frank 
brutality  to  such  lying.  But  at  heart  he  was  more  of  an  idealist 
than  the  rest,  and  he  had  not — he  could  not  have — any  more 
real  enemies  than  the  brutal  realists  whom  he  thought  he  pre- 
ferred. 

He  was  blinded  by  passion.  He  was  frozen  by  the  mist,  the 
anaemic  lying,  ^^the  sunless  phantom  Ideas.’^  With  his  whole 
being  he  reached  upwards  to  the  sun.  In  his  youthful  contempt 
for  the  hypocrisy  with  which  he  was  surrounded,  or  for  what 
he  took  to  be  hypocrisy,  he  did  not  see  the  high,  practical  wis- 
dom of  the  race  which  little  by  little  had  built  up  for  itself  ^ 
its  grandiose  idealism  in  order  to  suppress  its  savage  instincts,  1 
or  to  turn  them  to  account.  Not  arbitrary  reasons,  not  moral  ! 
and  religious  codes,  not  legislators  and  statesmen,  priests  and 
philosophers,  transform  the  souls  of  peoples  and  often  impose  I 
upon  them  a new  nature:  but  centuries  of  misfortune  and  ex- 
perience^ which  forge  the  life  of  peoples  who  have  the  will  tol 
live. 

And  yet  Christophe  went  on  composing : and  his  compositions 
were  not  examples  of  the  faults  which  he  found  in  others.  In 
him  creation  was  an  irresistible  necessity  which  would  not  sub- 
mit to  the  rules  which  his  intelligence  laid  down  for  it.  No 
man  creates  from  reason,  but  from  necessity. — It  is  not  enough 
to  have  recognized  the  untruth  and  affectation  inherent  in  the 
majority  of  the  feelings  to  avoid  falling  into  them:  long  and 
painful  endeavor  is  necessary  : nothing  is  more  difficult  than 
to  be  absolutely  true  in  modern  society  with  its  crushing  heri- 
tage of  indolent  habits  handed  down  through  generations.  It 
is  especially  difficult  for  those  people,  those  nations  who  are 
I possessed  by  an  indiscreet  mania  for  letting  their  hearts  speak — 
for  making  them  speak — unceasingly,  when  most  generally  it 
had  much  better  have  been  silent. 

Christophers  heart  was  very  German  in  that:  it  had  not  yet 
; learned  the  virtue  of  silence : and  that  virtue  did  not  belong 
to  his  age.  He  had  inherited  from  his  father  a need  for  talk- 


378 


JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 


ing,  and  talking  loudly.  He  knew  it  and  struggled  against  it : 
but  the  conflict  paralyzed  part  of  his  forces. — And  he  had  an- 
other gift  of  heredity,  no  less  burdensome,  which  had  come  to 
him  from  his  grandfather:  an  extraordinary  difficulty — in  ex- 
pressing himself  exactly.— He  was  the  son  of  a virtuoso.  He 
was  conscious  of  the  dangerous  attraction  of  virtuosity : a physi- 
cal pleasure,  the  pleasure  of  skill,  of  agility,  of  satisfled  mus- 
cular activity,  the  pleasure  of  conquering,  of  dazzling,  of  en- 
thralling in  his  own  person  the  many-headed  audience : an 
excusable  pleasure,-  in  a young  man  almost  an  innocent  pleasure, 
though  none  the  less  destructive  of  art  and  soul:  Christophe 
knew  it:  it  was  in  his  blood:  he  despised  it,  but  all  the  sam6 
he  yielded  to  it. 

And  so,  torn  between  the  instincts  of  his  race  and  those  of 
his  genius,  weighed  down  by  the  burden  of  a parasitical  past, 
which  covered  him  with  a crust  that  he  could  not  break  through, 
he  floundered  along,  and  was  much  nearer  than  he  thought  to 
all  that  he  shunned  and  banned.  All  his  compositions  were  a 
mixture  of  truth  and  turgidness,  of  lucid  strength  and  faltering  ! 
stupidity.  It  was  only  in  rare  moments  that  his  personality  , 
could  pierce  the  casing  of  the  dead  personality  which  hampered  t 
his  movements.  • 

He  was  alone.  He  had  no  guide  to  help  him  out  of  the  mire.  ; 
When  he  thought  he  was  out  of  it  he  slipped  back  again.  He  ^ 
went  blindly  on,  wasting  his  time  and  strength  in  futile  efforts.  ; 
He  was  spared  no  trial:  and  in  the  disorder  of  his  creative  j 
striving  he  never  knew  what  was  of  greatest  worth  in  what  he  | 
created.  He  tied  himself  up  in  absurd  projects,  symphonic  ' 
poems,  which  pretended  to  philosophy  and  were  of  monstrous  t 
dimensions.  He  was  too  sincere  to  be  able  to  hold  to  them  for  : 
long  together : -and  he  would  discard  them  in  disgust  before 
he  had  stretched  out  a single  movement.  Or  he  would  set  out 
to  translate  into  overtures  the  most  inaccessible  works  of  poetry. 
Then  he  would  flounder  about  in  a domain  which  was  not  his 
own.  Wlien  he  drew  up  scenarios  for  himself — (for  he  stuck 
at  nothing) — they  were  idiotic:  and  when  he  attacked  the  great 
works  of  Goethe,  Hebbel,  Kleist,  or  Shakespeare,  he  under-, 
stood  them  all  wrong.  It  was  not  want  of  intelligence  but  want 
of  the  critical  spirit:  he  could  not  yet  understand  others,  he  , 


EEVOLT 


379 

was  too  much  taken  up  with  himself : he  found  himself  every- 
where with  his  naive  and  turgid  soul. 

But  besides  these  monsters  who  were  not  really  begotten,  he 
wrote  a quantity  of  small  pieces,  which  were  the  immediate 
expression  of  passing  emotions — ^the  most  eternal  of  all:  musi- 
cal thoughts,  Lieder.  In  this  as  in  other  things  he  was  in 
passionate  reaction  against  current  practices.  He  would  take 
up  the  most  famous  poems,  already  set  to  music,  and  was  im- 
pertinent enough  to  try  to  treat  them  differently  and  with 
greater  truth  than  Schumann  and  Schubert.  Sometimes  he 
would  try  to  give  to  the  poetic  figures  of  Goethe— to  Mignon, 
the  Harpist  in  WtlJiclTiz  their  individual  character, 

exact  and  changing.  Sometimes  he  would  tackle  certain  love 
songs  which  the  weakness  of  the  artists  and  the  dullness  of  the 
audience  in  tacit  agreement  had  clothed  about  with  sickly  senti- 
mentality: and  he  would  unclothe  them:  he  would  restore  to 
them  their  rough,  crude  sensuality.  In  a word,  he  set  out  to 
make  passions  and  people  live  for  themselves  and  not  to  serve 
as  toys  for  German  families  seeking  an  easy  emotionalism  on 
Sundays  when  they  sat  about  in  some  Biergarten. 

But  generally  he  would  find  the  poets,  even  the  greatest  of 
them,  too  literary:  and  he  would  select  the  simplest  texts  for 
preference:  texts  of  old  Lieder,  jolly  old  songs,  which  he  had 
read  perhaps  in  some  improving  work:  he  would  take  care  not 
to  preserve  their  choral  character:  he  would  treat  them  with  a 
fine,  lively,  and  altogether  lay  audacity.  Or  he  would  take 
words  from  the  Gospel,  or  proverbs,  sometimes  even  words  heard 
by  chance,  scraps  of  dialogues  of  the  people,  children’s  thoughts : 
words  often  awkward  and  prosaic  in  which  there  was  only°pure 
feeling.  With  them  he  was  at  his  ease,  and  he  would  reach 
a depth  with  them  which  was  not  in  his  other  compositions, 
a depth  which  he  himself  never  suspected.  >. 

Good  or  bad,  more  often  bad  than  .good,  his  works  as  a whole 
had  a.bounding  vitality.  They  were  not  altogether  new:  far 
from  it.  Christophe  was  often  banal,  through  his  very  sincerity : 
he  repeated  sometimes  forms  already  used  because  they  exactly 
rendered  his  thought,  because  he  also  felt  in  that  way  and  not 
otherwise.  Nothing  would  have  induced  him  to  try  to  be 
original:  it  seemed  to  him  that  a man  must  be  very  common- 


380  JEAN-CHKISTOPHE  ; 

place  to  burden  himself  with  such  an  idea.  He  tried  to  be  him-  , 
self,  to  say  what  he  felt,  without  worrying  as  to  whether  what  ; 
he  said  had  been  said  before  him  or  not.  He  took  a pride  in 
believing  that  it  was  the  best  way  of  being  original  and  that 
Christophe  had  only  been  and  only  would  be  alive  once. 
With  the  magnificent  impudence  of  youth,  nothing  seemed  to 
him  to  have  been  done  before:  and  everything  seemed  to  him 
to  be  left  for  doing — or  for  doing  again.  And  the  feeling  of 
this  inward  fullness  of  life,  of  a life  stretching  endless  before 
him,  brought  him  to  a state  of  exuberant  and  rather  indiscreet 
happiness.  He  was  perpetually  in  a state  of  jubilation,  which 
had  no  need  of  joy:  it  could  adapt  itself  to  sorrow:  its  source 
overflowed  with  life,  was,  in  its  strength,  mother  of  all  happiness 
and  virtue.  To  live,  to  live  too  much!  ...  A man  who  does 
not  feel  within  himself  this  intoxication  of  strength,  this  jubila- 
tion in  living— even  in  the  depths  of  misery,— is  not  an  artist.  ■ 
That  is  the  touchstone.  True  greatness  is  shown  in  this  power  , 
of  rejoicing  through  joy  and  sorrow.  A Mendelssohn  or  a ^ 
Brahms,  gods  of  the  mists  of  October,  and  of  fine  rain,  have  . 
never  known  the  divine  power.  . . . t 

Christophe  was  conscious  of  it : and  he  showed  his  joy  simply,  ^ 
impudently.  He  saw  no  harm  in  it,  he  only  asked  to  share  it ! 
with  others.  He  did  not  see  how  such  joy  hurts  the  majority  ’ 
of  men,  who  never  can  possess  it  and  are  always  envious  of  it.  ; 
For  the  rest  he  never  bothered  about  pleasing  or  displeasing : . 
he  was  sure  of  himself,  and  nothing  seemed  to  him  simpler  than , 
to  communicate  his  conviction  to  others,  to  conquer.  In-  j 
stinctively  he  compared  his  riches  with  the  general  poverty  of- 
the  makers  of  music:  and  he  thought  that  it  would  be  very^ 
easy  to  make  his  superiority  recognized.  Too  easy,  even.  He  ; 
had  only  to  show  himself. 

He  showed  himself. 


They  were  waiting  for  him. 

Christophe  had  made  no  secret  of  his  feelings.  Since  he  had 
become  aware  of  German  Pharisaism,  which  refuses  to  see^ 
things  as  they  are,  he  had  made  it  a law  for  himself  that  he^ 
should  be  absolutely,  continually,  uncompromisingly  sincere  in 
everything  without  regard  for  anything  or  anybody  or  himself.' 


KEVOLT 


381 


And  as  he  could  do  nothing  without  going  to  extremes,  he 
was  extravagant  in  his  sincerity;  he  would  say  outrageous  things 
and  scandalize  people  a thousand  times  less  naive  than  him- 
self. He  never  dreamed  that  it  might  annoy  them.  When  he 
realized  the  idiocy  of  some  hallowed  composition  he  would  make 
haste  to  impart  his  discovery  to  everybody  he  encountered: 
musicians  of  the  orchestra,  or  amateurs  of  his  acquaintance. 
He  would  pronounce  the  most  absurd  judgments  with  a beam-^ 
ing  face.  At  first  no  one  took  him  seriously:  they  laughed 
at  his  freaks.  But  it  was  not  long  before  they  found  that  he 
was  always  reverting  to  them,  insisting  on  them  in  a way  that 
was  really  bad  taste.  It  became  evident  that  Christophe  be- 
lieved in  his  paradoxes:  and  they  became. less  amusing.  He 
was  a nuisance : at  concerts  he  would  make  ironic  remarks  in 
a loud  voice,  or  would  express  his  scorn  for  the  glorious  masters 
in  no  veiled  fashion  wherever  he  might  be. 

Everything  passed  from  mouth  to  mouth  in  the  little  town: 
not  a word  was  lost.  People  were  already  affronted  by  his  con- 
duct during  the  past  year.  They  had  not  forgotten  the  scan- 
dalous fashion  in  which  he  had  shown  himself  abroad  with 
Ada  and  the  troublous  times  of  the  sequel.  He  had  forgotten 
it  himself : one  day  wiped  out  another,  and  he  was  very  different 
from  what  he  had  been  two  months  before.  But  others  had 
not  forgotten:  those  who,  in  all  small  towns,  take  upon  them- 
selves scrupulously  to  note  down  all  the  faults,  all  the  imper- 
fections, all  the  sad,  ugly,  and  unpleasant  happenings  concern- 
ing their  neighbors,  so  that  nothing  is  ever  forgotten.  Chris- 
tophers new  extravagances  were  naturally  set,  side  by  side  with 
his  former  indiscretions,  in  the  scroll.  The  former  explained 
the  latter.  The  outraged  feelings  of  offended  morality  were  now 
bolstered  up  by  those  of  scandalized  good  taste.  The  kindliest 
of  them  said: 

He  is  trying  to  be  particular.^^ 

But  most  alleged: 

Total  verrucht!  (Absolutely  mad.) 

An  opinion  no  less  severe  and  even  more  dangerous  was 
I beginning  to  find  currency — an  opinion  assured  of  success  by 
Ireason  of  its  illustrious  origin:  it  was  said  that,  at  the  Palace, 
whither  Christophe  still  went  upon  his  official  duties,  he  had 


382 


JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 


had  the  bad  taste  in  conversation  with  the  Grand  Duke  himself, 
with  revolting  lack  of  decency,  to  give  vent  to  his  ideas  con- 
cerning the  illustrious  masters:  it  was  said  that  he  had  called 
Mendelssohn’s  Elijah  “a  clerical  humbug’s  paternoster,”  and 
he  had  called  certain  Lieder  of  Schumann  “ Backfisch  Musik  : 
and  that  in  the  face  of  the  declared  preference  of  the  august 
Princess  for  those  works ! The  Grand  Duke  had  cut  short  his 
impertinences  by  saying  dryly : 

“ To  hear  you,  sir,  one  would  doubt  your  being  a German.” 

This  vengeful  utterance,  coming  from  so  lofty  an  eminence, 
reached  the*  lowest  depths:  and  everybody  who  thought  he  I 
had  reason  to  be  annoyed  with  Christophe,  either  for  his  success, 
or  for  some  more  personal  if  not  more  cogent  reason,  did  not 
fail  to  call  to  mind  that  he  was  not  in  fact  pure  German.  His 
father’s  family,  it  was  remembered,  came  originally  from  Bel- 
gium. It  was  not  surprising,  therefore,  that  this  immigrant 
should  decry  the  national  glories.  That  explained  everything, 
and  German  vanity  found  reasons  therein  for  greater  self-esteem, , 
and  at  the  same  time  for  despising  its  adversary.  ! 

Christophe  himself  most  substantially  fed  this  Platonic 
vengeance.  It  is  very  imprudent  to  criticise  others  when  you^' 
are  yourself  on  the  point  of  challenging  criticism.  A cleverer  or 
less  frank  artist  would  have  shown  more  modesty  and  more 
respect  for  his  predecessors.  But  Christophe  could  see  no  rea-, 
son  for  hiding  his  contempt  for  mediocrity  or  his  joy  in  his: 
own  strength,  and  his  joy  was  shown  in  no  temperate  fashion.. 
Although  from  childhood  Christophe  had  been  turned  in  upon, 
himself  for  want  of  any  creature  to  confide  in,  of  late  he  had; 
come  by  a need  of  expansiveness.  He  had  too  much  joy  for\ 
himself : his  breast  was  too  small  to  contain  it : he  would  have; 
burst  if  he  had  not  shared  his  delight.  Failing  a friend,  he 
had  confided  in  his  colleague  in  the  orchestra,  the  second 
Kapellmeister,  Siegmund  Ochs,  a young  Wurtemberger,  a good 
fellow,  though  crafty,  who  showed  him  an  effusive  deference. 
Christophe  did  not  distrust  him : and,  even  if  he  had,  how  could 
it  have  occurred  to  him  that  it  might  be  harmful  to  confide  his 
joy  to  one  who  did  not  care,  or  even  to  an  enemy?  Ought  they 
not  rather  to  be  grateful  to  him?  Was  it  not  for  them  also 
that  he  was  working?  He  brought  happiness  for  all,  friends 


EEVOLT 


383 


and  enemies  alike. — He  had  nn  idea  that  there  is  nothing  more 
difficult  than  to  make  men  accept  a new  happiness ; they  almost 
prefer  their  old  misery : they  need  food  that  has  been  masticated 
for  ages.  But  what  is  most  intolerable  to  them  is  the  thought 
that  they  owe  such  happiness  to  another.  They  cannot  forgive 
that  offense  until  there  is  no  way  of  evading  it : and  in  any  case, 
they  do  contrive  to  make  the  giver  pay  dearly  for  it. 

There  were,  then,  a thousand  reasons  why  Christophe’s  con- 
fidences should  not  be  kindly  received  by  anybody.  But  there 
were  a thousand  and  one  reasons  why  they  should  not  be  accept- 
able to  Siegmund  Ochs.  The  first  Kapellmeister,  Tobias  Pfeif- 
fer, was  on  the  point  of  retiring:  and,  in  spite  of  his  youth, 
Christophe  had  every  chance  of  succeeding  him.  Ochs  was  too 
good  a German  not  to  recognize  that  Christophe  was  worthy  of 
the  position,  since  the  Court  was  on  his  side.  But  he  had  too 
good  an  opinion  of  himself  not  to  believe  that  he  would  have 
been  more  worthy  had  the  Court  known  him  better.  And  so 
he  received  Christophe’s  effusions  with  a strange  smile  when 
he  arrived  at  the  theater  in  the  morning  with  a face  that  he 
tried  hard  to  make  serious,  though  it  beamed  in  spite  of  him- 
self. 

“ Well  ? ” he  would  say  slyly  as  he  came  up  to  him,  another 
masterpiece  ? ” 

Christophe  would  take  his  arm. 

“Ah!  my  friend.  It  is  the  best  of  all.  ...  If  you  could 
hear  it!  . . . Devil  take  me,  it  is  too  beautiful!  There  has 
never  been  an3'thing  like  it.  God  help  the  poor  audience ! 
They  will  only  long  for  one  thing  when  they  have  heard  it:  to 
die.” 

His  words  did  not  fall  upon  deaf  ears.  Instead  of  smiling, 
or  of  chaffing  Christophe  about  his  childish  enthusiasm— he 
would  have  been  the  first  to  laugh  at  it  and  beg  pardon  if  he 
had  been  made  to  feel  the  absurdity  of  it— Ochs  went  into 
ironic  ecstasies : he  drew  Christophe  on  to  further  enormities : 
and  when  he  left  him  made  haste  to  repeat  them  all,  making 
them  even  more  grotesque.  The  little  circle  of  musicians 
chuckled  over  them : and  every  one  was  impatient  for  the  oppor- 
tunity of  judging  the  unhappy  compositions. — They  were  all 
judged  beforehand. 


384 


JEAN-CHKISTOPHE 


At  last  they  appeared — Christophe  had  chosen  from  the  better 
of  his  works  an  overture  to  the  Judith  of  Hebbel,  the  savage 
energy  of  which  had  attracted  him,  in  his  reaction  against 
German  atony,  although  he  was  beginning  to  lose  his  taste 
for  it,  knowing  intuitively  the  unnaturalness  of  such  assumption 
of  genius,  always  and  at  all  costs.  He  had  added  a symphony 
which  bore  the  bombastic  title  of  the  Basle  Boecklin,  “The 
Dream  of  Life,”  and  the  motto : " Yita  somnium  hreve.”  A 
song-cycle  completed  the  programme,  with  a few  classical  works, 
and  a Festmarsch  by  Ochs,  which  Christophe  had  kindly  offered 
to  include  in  his  concert,  though  he  knew  it  to  be  mediocre. 

Nothing  much  happened  during  the  rehearsals.  Although 
the  orchestra  understood  absolutely  nothing  of  the  composition 
it  was  playing  and  everybody  was  privately  disconcerted  by  the 
oddities  of  the  new  music,  they  had  no  time  to  form  an  opinion: 
they  were  not  capable  of  doing  so  until  the  public  had  pro-  • 
nounced  on  it.  Besides,  Christophe’s  confidence  imposed  on  , 
the  artists,  who,  like  every  good  German  orchestra,  were  docile  - 
and  disciplined.  His  only  difficulties  were  with  the  singer.  She 
was  the  blue  lady  of  the  Townhalle  concert.  She  was  famous 
through  Germany:  the  domestic  creature  sang  Briinnhilde  and  | 
Kundry  at  Dresden  and  Bayreuth  with  undoubted  lung-power.  ; 
But  if  in  the  Wagnerian  school  she  had  learned  the  art  of  ' 
which  that  school  is  justly  proud,  the  art  of  good  articulation,  ^ 
of  projecting  the  consonants  through  space,  and  of  battering  , 
the  gaping  audience  with  the  vowels  as  with  a club,  she  had  ■ 
not  learned — designedly — the  art  of  being  natural.  She  pro-  j 
vided  for  every  word : everything  was  accentuated : the  syllables  I 
moved  with  leaden  feet,  and  there  was  a tragedy  in  every  • 
sentence.  Christophe  implored  her  to  moderate  her  dramatic  ; 
power  a little.  She  tried  at  first  graciously  enough:  but  her 
natural  heaviness  and  her  need  for  letting  her  voice  go  carried 
her  away.  Christophe  became  nervous.  He  told  the  respectable 
lady  that  he  had  tried  to  make  human  beings  speak  with  his 
speaking-trumpet  and  not  the  dragon  Fafner.  She  took  his 
insolence  in  bad  part — naturally.  She  said  that,  thank  Heaven ! 
she  knew  what  singing  was,  and  that  she  had  had  the  honor  of 
interpreting  the  Lieder  of  Maestro  Brahms,  in  the  presence  of  | 
that  great  man,  and  that  he  had  never  tired  of  hearing  her.  | 


EEVOLT 


385 


So  much  the  worse ! So  much  the  worse ! cried  Christophe. 

She  asked  him  with  a haughty  smile  to  be  kind  enough  to 
explain  the  meaning  of  his  energetic  remark.  He  replied  that 
never  in  his  life  had  Brahms  known  what  it  was  to  be  natural, 
that  his  eulogies  were  the  worst  possible  censure,  and  that 
although  he — Christophe — was  not  very  polite,  as  she  had  justly 
observed,  never  would  he  have  gone  so  far  as  to  say  anything  so 
unpleasant. 

The  argument  went  on  in  this  fashion : and  the  lady  insisted 
on  singing  in  her  own  way,  with  heavy  pathos  and  melodramatic 
effects — until  one  day  when  Christophe  declared  coldly  that  he 
saw  the  truth : it  was  her  nature  and  nothing  could  change  it : 
but  since  the  Lieder  could  not  be  sung  properly,  they  should 
not  be  sung  at  all : he  withdrew  them  from  the  programme.---I1? 
was  on  the  eve  of  the  concert  and  they  were  counting  on  the 
Lieder : she  had  talked  about  them : she  was  musician  enough 
to  appreciate  certain  of  their  qualities : Christophe  insulted  her : 
and  as  she  was  not  sure  that  the  morrow^s  concert  would  not 
set  the  seal  on  the  young  man’s  fame,  she  did  not  wish  to  quarrel 
with  a rising  star.  She  gave  way  suddenly:  and  during  the 
last  rehearsal  she  submitted  docilely  to  all  Christophe’s  wishes. 
But  she  had  made  up  her  mind — at  the  concert — to  have  her 
own  way. 

The  day  came.  Christophe  had  no  anxiety.  He  was  too  full 
of  his  music  to  be  able  to  judge  it.  He  realized  that  some  of 
his  works  in  certain  places  bordered  on  the  ridiculous.  But 
what  did  that  matter?  Nothing  great  can  be  written  without 
touching  the  ridiculous.  To  reach  the  heart  of  things  it  is 
necessary  to  dare  human  respect,  politeness,  modesty,  the  timid- 
5 ity  of  social  lies  under  which  the  heart  is  stifled.  If  nobody 
j is  to  be  affronted  and  success  attained,  a man  must  be  resigned 
I all  his  life  to  remain  bound  by  convention  and  to  give  to  second- 
rate  people  the  second-rate  truth,  mitigated,  diluted,  which  they 
are  capable  of  receiving:  he  must  dwell  in  prison  all  his  life. 
A man  is  great  only  when  he  has  set  his  foot  on  such  anxieties. 
Christophe  trampled  them  underfoot.  Let  them  hiss  him:  he 
was  sure  of  not  leaving  them  indifferent.  He  conjured  up  the 
faces  that  certain  people  of  his  acquaintance  would  make  as 


386 


JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 


they  heard  certain  rather  bold  passages.  He  expected  bitter 
criticism:  he  smiled  at  it  already.  In  any  case  they  would  have 
to  be  blind— or  deaf— to  deny  that  there  was  force  in  it— pleas- 
ant or  otherwise,  what  did  it  matter?  Pleasant!  Pleasant! 

Force!  That  is  enough.  Let  it  go  its  way,  and  bear  all  * 

before  it,  like  the  Rhine!  ...  , ^ ^ 

He  had  one  setback.  The  Grand  Duke  did  not  come.  The 
royal  box  was  only  occupied  by  Court  people,  a few  ladies-in- 
waiting.  Christophe  was  irritated  by  it.  He  thought:  “The 
fool  is  cross  with  me.  He  does  not  know  what  to  think  of  my 
work-  he  is  afraid  of  compromising  himself.”  He  shrugged 
his  shoulders,  pretending  not  to  be  put  out  by  such  idiocy. 
Others  paid  more  attention  to  it:  it  was  the  first  lesson  for 

him,  a menace  of  his  future.  _ n ;i 

The  public  had  not  shown  much  more  interest  than  the  Orand 
Duke:  quite  a third  of  the  hall  was  empty.  Christophe  could 
not  help  thinking  bitterly  of  the  crowded  halls  at  his  concerts 
when  he  was  a child.  He  would  not  have  been  surprised  by 
the  change  if  he  had  had  more  experience : it  would  have  seemed 
natural  to  him  that  there  were  fewer  people  come  to  hear 
him  when  he  made  good  music  than  when  he  made  bad : tor 
it  is  not  music  but  the  musician  in  which  the  greater  part  of 
the  public  is  interested:  and  it  is  obvious  that  a musician  who 
is  a man  and  like  everybody  else  is  much  less  interesting  than 
a musician  in  a child’s  little  trowsers  or  short  frock,  who  tickles 
sentimentality  or  amuses  idleness.  _ , j 

After  waiting  in  vain  for  the  hall  to  fill,  Christophe  decided 
to  begin.  He  tried  to  pretend  that  it  was  better  so,  saying, 
“ A few  friends  but  good.” — His  optimism  did  not  last  long. 

His  pieces  were  played  in  silence. — There  is  a silence  in  ^ 
audience  which  seems  big  and  overflowing  with  love.  But 
there  was  nothing  in  this.  Nothing.  Utter  sleep.  Blankness 
Every  phrase  seemed  to  drop  into  depths  of  indifference.  With 
his  back  turned  to  the  audience,  busy  with  his  orchestra,  yli”®" 
tophe  was  fully  aware  of  everything  that  was  happening  in  y ® 
hall,  with  those  inner  antennal,  with  which  every  true  musician 
is  endowed,  so  that  he  knows  whether  what  he  is  playing  is 
waking  an  echo  in  the  hearts  about  him.  He  went  on  conduct- 
ing  and  growing  excited  while  he  was  frozen  by  the  co 


REVOLT  387 

mist  of  boredom  rising  from  the  stalls  and  the  boxes  behind 
him. 

At  last  the  overture  was  ended : and  the  audience  applauded. 
It  applauded  coldly,  politely,  and  was  then  silent.  Christophe 
would  rather  have  had  them  hoot.  ...  A hiss!  One  hiss! 
Anything  to  give  a sign  of  life,  or  at  least  of  reaction  against 
his  work!  . . . Nothing. — He  looked  at  the  audience.  The 
people  were  looking  at  each  other,  each  trying  to  find  out  what 
the  other  thought.  They  did  not  succeed  and  relapsed  into 
indifference. 

The  music  went  on.  The  symphony  was  played. — Christophe 
found  it  hard  to  go  on  to  the  end.  Several  times  he  was  on 
the  point  of  throwing  down  his  baton  and  running  away.  Their 
apathy  overtook  him:  at  last  he  could  not  understand  what  he 
was  conducting : he  could  not  breathe : he  felt  that  he  was  falling 
into  fathomless  boredom.  There  was  not  even  the  whispered 
ironic  comment  which  he  had  anticipated  at  certain  passages: 
the  audience  were  reading  their  programmes.  Christophe  heard 
the  pages  turned  all  together  with  a dry  rustling:  and  then 
once  more  there  was  silence  until  the  last  chord,  wien  the  same 
polite  applause  showed  that  they  had  not  understood  that  the 
symphony  was  finished. — And  yet  there  were  four  pairs  of  hands 
went  on  clapping  when  the  others  had  finished:  but  they  awoke 
no  echo,  and  stopped  ashamed:  that  made  the  emptiness  seem 
more  empty,  and  the  little  incident  served  to  show  the  audience 
how  bored  it  had  been. 

Christophe  took  a seat  in  the  middle  of  the  orchestra:  he 
dared  not  look  to  right  or  left.  He  wanted  to  cry:  and  at  the 
same  time  he  was  quivering  with  rage.  He  was  fain  to  get 
up  and  shout  at  them : You  bore  me ! Ah ! How  you  bore 
me!  I cannot  bear  it!  ...  Go  away!  Go  away,  all  of 
, you!  . . .^^ 

i The  audience  woke  up  a little:  they  were  expecting  the  singer, 
— they  were  accustomed  to  applauding  her.  In  that  ocean  of  new 
I music  in  which  they  were  drifting  without  a compass,  she  at, 
least  was  sure,  a known  land,  and  a solid,  in  which  there  was 
no  danger  of  being  lost.  Christophe  divined  their  thoughts 
, exactly : and  he  laughed  bitterly.  The  singer  was  no  less  con- 
scious  of  the  expectancy  of  the  audience : Christophe  saw  that 


388  JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 

in  her  regal  airs  when  he  came  and  told  her  that  it  was  her  turn 
to  appear.  They  looked  at  each  other  inimically.  Instead  of 
offering  her  his  arm,  Christophe  thrust  his  hands  into  his 
pockets  and  let  her  go  on  alone.  Furious  and  out  of  counte- 
nance she  passed  him.  He  followed  her  with  a bored  expression. 
As  soon  as  she  appeared  the  audience  gave  her  an  ovation:  that 
made  everybody  happier:  every  face  brightened,  the  audience 
grew  interested,  and  glasses  were  brought  into  play.  Certain 
of  her  power  she  tackled  the  Lieder,  in  her  own  way,  of  course, 
and  absolutely  disregarded  Christophe’s  remarks  of  the  evening 
before.  Christophe,  who  was  accompanying  her,  went  pale.  He 
had  foreseen  her  rebellion.  At  the  first  change  that  she  made 
he  tapped  on  the  piano  and  said  angrily : 

“ Ho ! ” . . 

She  went  on.  He  whispered  behind  her  back  in  a low  voice 

of  fury: 

“ Ho ! Ho ! Hot  like  that ! . . . Hot  that ! ” 

Unnerved  by  his  fierce  growls,  which  the  audience  could  not 
hear,  though  the  orchestra  caught  every  syllable,  she  stuck  to 
it,  dragging  her  notes,  making  pauses  like  organ  stops.  He 
paid  no  heed  to  them  and  went  ahead:  in  the  end  they  got 
out  of  time.  The  audience  did  not  notice  it : for  some  time 
they  had  been  saying  that  Christophe’s  music  was  not  made 
to  seem  pleasant  or  right  to  the  ear : but  Christophe,^  who  was 
not  of  that  opinion,  was  making  lunatic  grimaces:  and  at  last 
he  exploded.  He  stopped  short  in  the  middle  of  a bar : 

“ Stop,”  he  shouted. 

She  was  carried  on  by  her  own  impetus  for  half  a bar  and 
then  stopped: 

« That’s  enough,”  he  said  dryly.  _ _ 

There  was  a moment  of  amazement  in  tl^e  audience.  After 
a few  seconds  he  said  icily : 

“ Begin  again ! ” , , i j t. 

She  looked  at  him  in  stupefaction:  her  hands  trembled:  she 
thought  for  a moment  of  throwing  his  book  at  his  head : after- 
wards she  did  not  understand  how  it  was  that  she  did  not  do 
so.  But  she  was  overwhelmed  by  Christophe’s  authority  and  his 
unanswerable  tone  of  voice:  she  began  again.  She  sang  the 
whole  song-cycle,  without  changing  one  shade  of  meaning,  or 


EBVOLT  389 

a single  movement:  for  she  felt  that  he  would  spare  her  noth- 
ing: and  she  shuddered  at  the  thought  of  a fresh  insult. 

When  she  had  finished  the  audience  recalled  her  frantically. 
They  were  not  applauding  the  Lieder — (they  would  have  ap- 
plauded just  the  same  if  she  had  sung  any  others) — ^but  the 
famous  singer  who  had  grown  old  in  harness:  they  knew  that 
they  could  safely  admire  her.  Besides,  they  wanted  to  make 
up  to  her  for  the  insult  she  had  just  received.  They  were  not 
quite  sure,  but  they  did  vaguely  understand  that  the  singer  had 
made  a mistake : and  they  thought  it  indecent  of  Christophe  to 
call  their  attention  to  it.  They  encored  the  songs.  But  Chris- 
tophe shut  the  piano  firmly. 

The  singer  did  not  notice  his  insolence:  she  was  too  much 
upset  to  think  of  singing  again.  She  left  the  stage  hurriedly 
and  shut  herself  up  in  her  box:  and  then  for  a quarter  of  an 
hour  she  relieved  her  heart  of  the  flood  of  wrath  and  rage  that 
was  pent  up  in  it : a nervous  attack,  a deluge  of  tears,  indignant 
outcries  and  imprecations  against  Christophe, — she  omitted 
nothing.  Her  cries  of  anger  could  be  heard  through  the  closed 
door.  Those  of  her  friends  who  had  made  their  way  there 
told  everybody  when  they  left  that  Christophe  had  behaved  like 
a cad.  Opinion  travels  quickly  in  a concert  hall.  And  so 
when  Christophe  went  to  his  desk  for  the  last  piece  of  music 
the  audience  was  stormy.  But  it  was  not  his  composition:  it 
was  the  'Festniarsch  by  Ochs,  which  Christophe  had  kindly  in- 
cluded in  his  programme.  The  audience — who  were  quite  at 
their  ease  with  the  dull  music — found  a very  simple  method  of 
displaying  their  disapproval  of  Christophe  without  going  so  far 
as  to  hiss  him : they  acclaimed  Ochs  ostentatiously,  recalled  the 
composer  two  or  three  times,  and  he  appeared  readily.  And 
that  was  the  end  of  the  concert. 

The  Grand  Duke  and  everybody  at  the  Court — ^the  bored, 
gossiping  little  provincial  town — lost  no  detail  of  what  had 
happened.  The  papers  which  were  friendly  towards  the  ainger 
made  no  allusion  to  the  incident:  but  they  all  agreed  in  exalt- 
ing her  art  while  they  only  mentioned  the  titles  of  the  Lieder 
which  she  had  sung.  They  published  only  a few  lines  about 
Christophe’s  other  compositions,  and  they  all  said  almost  the 
same  things : “.  . . Knowledge  of  counterpoint.  Complicated 


390 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


writing.  Lack  of  inspiration.  No  melody.  Written  with  the 
head,  not  with  the  heart.  Want  of  sincerity.  Trying  to  be 
original.  . . .”  Followed  a paragraph  on  true  originality,  that 
of  the  masters  who  are  dead  and  buried,  Mozart,  Beethoven, 
Loewe,  Schubert,  Brahms,  “those  who  are  original  without 
thinking  of  it.” — Then  by  a natural  transition  they  passed  to 
the  revival  at  the  Grand  Ducal  Theater  of  the  Nachtlager  von 
Granada  of  Konradin  Kreutzer:  a long  account  was  given  of 
“the  delicious  music,  as  fresh  and  jolly  as  when  it  was  first 
written.” 

Christophe’s  compositions  met  with  absolute  and  astonished 
lack  of  comprehension  from  the  most  kindly  disposed  critics: 
veiled  hostility  from  those  who  did  not  like  him,  and  were 
arming  themselves  for  later  ventures:  and  from  the  general 
public,  guided  by  neither  friendly  nor  hostile  critics,  silence. 
Left  to  its  own  thoughts  the  general  public  does  not  think  at 
all : that  goes  without  saying. 

Christophe  was  bowled  over. 

And  yet  there  was  nothing  surprising  in  his  defeat.  There 
were  reasons,  three  to  one,  why  his  compositions  should  not 
please.  They  were  immature.  They  were,  secondly,  too  ad- 
vanced to  be  understood  at  once.  And,  lastly,  people  were  only 
too  glad  to  give  a lesson  to  the  impertinent  youngster. — But 
Christophe  was  not  cool-headed  enough  to  admit  that  his  reverse 
was  legitimate.  He  had  none  of  that  serenity  which  the  true 
artist  gains  from  the  mournful  experience  of  long  misunder- 
standing at  the  hands  of  men  and  their  incurable  stupidity. 
His  naive  confidence  in  the  public  and  in  success  which  he 
thought  he  could  easily  gain  because  he  deserved  it,  crumbled 
away.  He  would  have  thought  it  natural  to  have  enemies.  But 
what  staggered  him  was  to  find  that  he  had  not  a single  friend. 
Those  on  whom  he  had  counted,  those  who  hitherto  had  seemed 
to  be  interested  in  everything  that  he  wrote,  had  not  given  him 
a single  word  of  encouragement  since  the  concert.  He  tried 
to  probe  them:  they  took  refuge  behind  vague  words.  He  in- 
sisted, he  wanted  to  know  what  they  really  thought:  the  most 
sincere  of  them  referred  back  to  his  former  works,  his  foolish 
early  efforts. — More  than  once  in  his  life  he  was  to  hear  his 


EEVOLT  391 

new  works  condemned  by  comparison  with  the  older  ones, — 
and  that  by  the  same  people  who,  a few  years  before,  had  con- 
demned his  older  works  when  they  were  new:  that  is  the  usual 
ordering  of  these  things.  Christophe  did  not  like  it:  he  ex- 
claimed loudly.  If  people  did  not  like  him,  well  and  good: 
he  accepted  that:  it  even  pleased  him  since  he  could  not  be 
friends  with  everybody.  But  that  people  should  pretend  to 
be  fond  of  him  and  not  allow  him  to  grow  up,  that  they  should 
try  to  force  him  all  his  life  to  remain  a child,  was  beyond  the 
pale!  What  is  good  at  twelve  is  not  good  at  twenty:  and  he 
hoped  not  to  stay  at  that,  but  to  change  and  to  go  on  changing 
always.  . . . These  idiots  who  tried  to  stop  life!  . . . What 
was  interesting  in  his  childish  compositions  was  not  their  child- 
ishness and  silliness,  but  the  force  in  them  hungering  for  the 
future.  And  they  were  trying  to  kill  his  future ! ...  No,  they 
had  never  understood  what  he  was,  they  had  never  loved  him, 
never  then  or  now:  they  only  loved  the  weakness  and  vulgarity 
in  him,  everything  that  he  had  in  common  with  others,  and  not 
himself,  not  what  he  really  was:  their  friendship  was  a mis- 
understanding. . . . 

He  was  exaggerating,  perhaps.  It  often  happens  with  quite 
nice  people  who  are  incapable  of  liking  new  work  which  they 
sincerely  love  when  it  is  twenty  years  old.  New  life  smacks 
too  strong  for  their  weak  senses : the  scent  of  it  must  evaporate 
in  the  winds  of  Time.  A work  of  art  only  becomes  intelligible 
: to  them  when  it  is  crusted  over  with  the  dust  of  years. 

But  Christophe  could  not  admit  of  not  being  understood 
when  he  was  present,  and  of  being  understood  when  he  was  past. 
He  preferred  to  think  that  he  was  not  understood  at  all,  in 
any  case,  even.  And  he  raged  against  it.  He  was  foolish 
! enough  to  want  to  make  himself  understood,  to  explain  himself, 
to  argue.  Although  no  good  purpose  was  served  thereby:  he 
would  have  had  to  reform  the  taste  of  his  time.  But  he  was 
afraid  of  nothing.  He  was  determined  by  hook  or  by  crook  to 
clean  up  German  taste.  But  it  was  utterly  impossible:  he 
could  not  convince  anybody  by  means  of  conversation,  in  which 
he  found  it  difficult  to  find  words,  and  expressed  himself  with 
an  excess  of  violence  about  the  great  musicians  and  even  about 
the  men  to  whom  he  was  talking:  he  only  succeeded  in  making 


392 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


a few  more  enemies.  He  would  have  had  to  prepare  his  ideas 
beforehand,  and  then  to  force  the  public  to  hear  him.  . . . 

And  just  then,  at  the  appointed  hour,  his  star — ^his  evil  star — 
gave  him  the  means  of  doing  so. 

He  was  sitting  in  the  restaurant  of  the  theater  in  a group 
of  musicians  belonging  to  the  orchestra  whom  he  was  scandaliz- 
ing by  his  artistic  judgments.  They  were  not  all  of  the  same 
opinion : but  they  were  all  ruffled  by  the  freedom  of  his  language. 
Old  Krause,  the  alto,  a good  fellow  and  a good  musician,  who 
sincerely  loved  Christophe,  tried  to  turn  the  conversation:  he 
coughed,  then  looked  out  for  an  opportunity  of  making  a pun. 
But  Christophe  did  not  hear  him:  he  went  on:  and  Krause 
mourned  and  thought: 

“ What  makes  him  say  such  things  ? God  bless  him ! You 
can  think  these  things : Mt  you  must  not  say  them.” 

The  odd  thing  was  that  he  also  thought  “ these  things  ” : at 
least,  he  had  a glimmering  of  them,  and  Christophe’s  words 
roused  many  doubts  in  him:  but  he  had  not  the  courage  to 
confess  it,  or  openly  to  agree — ^half  from  fear  of  compromising 
himself,  half  from  modesty  and  distrust  of  himself. 

Weigl,  the  cornet-player,  did  not  want  to  know  anything : he 
was  ready  to  admire  anything,  or  anybody,  good  or  bad,  star 
or  gas-jet:  everything  was  the  same  to  him:  there  were  no 
degrees  in  his  admiration:  he  admired,  admired,  admired.  It 
was  a vital  necessity  to  him:  it  hurt  him  when  anybody  tried 
to  curb  him. 

Old  Kuh,  the  violoncellist,  suffered  even  more.  He  loved 
bad  music  with  all  his  heart.  Everything  that  Christophe 
hounded  down  with  his  sarcasm  and  invective  was  infinitely 
dear  to  him:  instinctively  his  choice  pitched  on  the  most  con- 
ventional works : his  soul  was  a reservoir  of  tearful  and  high- 
flown  emotion.  Indeed,  he  was  not  dishonest  in  his  tender 
regard  for  all  the  sham  great  men.  It  was  when  he  tried  to 
pretend  that  he  liked  the  real  great  men  that  he  was  lying  to 
himself — in  perfect  innocence.  There  are  “Brahmins”  who 
think  to  find  in  their  God  the  breath  of  old  men  of  genius: 
they  love  Beethoven  in  Brahms.  Kuh  went  one  better:  he  loved 
Brahms  in  Beethoven. 


EEVOLT 


393 


But  the  most  enraged  of  all  with  Christophe’s  paradoxes  was 
Spitz,  the  bassoon.  It  was  not  so  much  his  musical  instinct 
that  was  wounded  as  his  natural  servility.  One  of  the  Eoman 
Emperors  wished  to  die  standing.  Spitz  wished  to  die,  as  he 
had  lived,  crawling;  that  was  his  natural  position:  it  was  de- 
lightful to  him  to  grovel  at  the  feet  of  everything  that  was 
official,  hallowed,  “ arrived  ” : and  he  was  beside  himself  when 
anybody  tried  to  keep  him  from  playing  the  lackey,  comfort- 

ably.  . n . T • 

So,  Kuh  groaned,  Weigl  threw  up  his  hands  in  despair, 

Krause  made  jokes,  and  Spitz  shouted  in^  a shrill  voice.  But 
Christophe  went  on  imperturbably  shouting  louder  than  the 
rest:  and  saying  monstrous  things  about  Germany  and  the 

Germans.  . * . , v • j 

At  the  next  table  a young  man  was  listening  to  him  and 
rocking  with  laughter.  He  had  black  curly  hair,  fine,  intelligent 
eyes,  a large  nose,  which  at  its  end  could  not  make  up  its  mind 
to  go  either  to  right  or  left,  and  rather  than  go  straight  on,  went 
to  both  sides  at  once,  thick  lips,  and  a clever,  mobile  face : he 
was  following  everything  that  Christophe  said,  hanging  on  his 
lips,  reflecting  every  word  with  a sympathetic  and  yet  mocking 
attention,  wrinkling  up  his  forehead,  his  temples,  the  corners 
of  his  eyes,  round  his  nostrils  and  cheeks,  grimacing  with 
laughter,  and  every  now  and  then  shaking  all  over  convulsively. 
He  did  not  join  in  the  conversation,  but  he  did  not  miss  a 
word  of  it.  He  showed  his  joy  especially  when  he  saw  Chris- 
tophe, involved  in  some  argument  and  heckled  by  Spitz,  flounder 
about,  stammer,  and  stutter  with  anger,  until  he  had  found 
the  word  he  was  seeking, — a rock  with  which  to  crush  his 
adversary.  And  his  delight  knew  no  bounds  when  Christophe, 
swept  along  by  his  passions  far  beyond  the  capacity  of  his 
thought,  enunciated  monstrous  paradoxes  which  made  his  hear- 

! ers  snort.  ^ . j.  v 

i At  last  they  broke  up,  each  of  them  tired  out  with  feeling 
and  alleging  his  own  superiority.  As  Christophe,  the  last  to 
go,  was  leaving  the  room  he  was  accosted  by  the  young  man 
who  had  listened  to  his  words  with  such  pleasure.  He  had 
not  yet  noticed  him.  The  other  politely  removed  his  hat,  smiled, 
and  asked  permission  to  introduce  himself: 


394 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


Franz  Mannheim/^  ] 

He  begged  pardon  for  his  indiscretion  in  listening  to  the  I 
argument,  and  congratulated  Christophe  on  the  maestria  with  ' 
which  he  had  pulverized  his  opponents.  He  was  still  laughing  ; 
at  the  thought  of  it.  Christophe  was  glad  to  hear  it,  and  looked  ■ 
at  him  a little  distrustfully : 

Seriously  ? he  asked.  ^^You  are  not  laughing  at 

me  ? 

The  other  swore  by  the  gods.  Christophers  face  lit  up. 

^^Then  you  think  I am  right?  You  are  of  my  opinion ?r^  ’ 

Well,r^  Mannheim,  I am  not  a musician.  I know 
nothing  of  music.  The  only  music  I like — (if  it  is  not  too 
flattering  to  say  so) — is  yours.  . . . That  may  show  you  that  ^ 
my  taste  is  not  so^bad.  . . ; 

Oh ! said  Christophe  skeptically,  though  he  was  flattered  ! 
all  the  same,  that  proves  nothing.r^  ) 

^^You  are  difficult  to  please.  . . . Good!  ...  I think  as  : 
you  do:  that  proves  nothing.  And  I don^t  venture  to  judge  ; 
what  you  say  of  German  musicians.  But,  anyhow,  it  is  so  true  j 
of  the  Germans  in  general,  the  old  Germans,  all  the  romantic  J 
idiots  with  their  rancid  thought,  their  sloppy  emotion,  their  | 
senile  reiteration  which  we  are  asked  to  admire,  the  eternal  ] 
Yesterday,  which  has  always  teen,  and  always  will  he,  and  will  | 
te  law  to-morrow  because  it  is  law  to-day/  . . . ! | 

He  recited  a few  lines  of  the  famous  passage  in  Schiller:  | 

. . Das  ewig  Gestrige,  | 

Das  immer  war  und  immer  wiederJcehrt.  . . | 

ii 

i 

Himself,  first  of  all ! He  stopped  in  the  middle  of  his  i 
recitation.  i 

^^Who?^^  asked  Christophe. 

The  pump-maker  who  wrote  that ! | 

Christophe  did  not  understand.  But  Mannheim  went  1 
on: 

I should  like  to  have  a general  cleaning  up  of  art  and  ■ 
-thought  every  fifty  years — nothing  to  be  left  standing.^^ 

^^A  little  drastic,^^  said  Christophe,  smiling. 

^^No,  I assure  you.  Fifty  years  is  too  much:  I should  say, 


REVOLT 


395 


thirty.  . . . And  even  less ! ...  It  is  a hygienic  measure.  One 
does  not  keep  one’s  ancestors  in  one’s  house.  One  gets  rid  of 
them,  when  they  are  dead,  and  sends  them  elsewhere,  there 
politely  to  rot,  and  one  places  stones  on  them  to  be  quite  sure 
that  they  will  not  come  back.  Nice  people  put  flowers  on  them, 
too.  I don’t  mind  if  they  like  it.  All  I ask  is  to  be  left  in 
peace.  I leave  them  alone ! Each  for  his  own  side,  say  I : the 
dead  and  the  living.” 

There  are  some  dead  who  are  more  alive  than  the  living.” 

No,  no!  It  would  be  more  true  to  say  that  there  are  some 
living  who  are  more  dead  than  the  dead.” 

Maybe.  In  any  case,  there  are  old  things  which  are  still 
young.” 

Then  if  they  are  still  young  we  can  And  them  for  ourselves. 

. . . But  I don’t  believe  it.  What  has  been  good  once  never  is 
good  again.  Nothing  is  good  but  change.  Before  all  we  have 
to  rid  ourselves  of  the  old  men  and  things.  There  are  too  many 
of  them  in  Germany.  Death  to  them,  say  I ! ” 

Christophe  listened  to  these  squibs  attentively  and  labored 
to  discuss  them:  he  was  in  part  in  sympathy  with  them,  he 
recognized  certain  of  his  own  thoughts  in  them:  and  at  the 
same  time  he  felt  a little  embarrassed  at  having  them  so  blown 
out  to  the  point  of  caricature.  But  as  he  assumed  that  every- 
body else  was  as  serious  as  himself,  he  thought  that  perhaps 
Mannheim,  who  seemed  to  be  more  learned  than  himself  and 
spoke  more  easily,  was  right,  and  was  drawing  the  logical  con- 
clusions from  his  principles.  Vain  Christophe,  whom  so  many 
people  could  not  forgive  for  his  faith  in  himself,  was  really 
most  naively  modest,  often  tricked  by  his  modesty  when  he  was 
with  those  who  were  better  educated  than  himself, — especially 
when  they  consented  not  to  plume  themselves  on  it  to  avoid  an 
awkward  discussion.  Mannheim,  who  was  amusing  himself 
with  his  own  paradoxes,  and  from  one  sally  to  another  had 
reached  extravagant  quips  and  cranks,  at  which  he  was  laugh- 
ing immensely,  was  not  accustomed  to  being  taken  seriously: 
he  was  delighted  with  the  trouble  that  Christophe  was  taking 
to  discuss  his  nonsense,  and  even  to  understand  it:  and  while 
he  laughed,  he  was  grateful  for  the  importance  which  Chris- 
tophe gave  him:  he  thought  him  absurd  and  charming. 


396  JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


They  parted  very  good  friends:  and  Christophe  was  not  a 
little  surprised  three  hours  later  at  rehearsal  to  see  Mannheim^s 
head  poked  through  the  little  door  leading  to  the  orchestra, 
smiling  and  grimacing,  and  making  mysterious  signs  at  him. 
When  the  rehearsal  was  over  Christophe  went  to  him.  Mann- 
heim took  his  arm  familiarly. 

^^You  can  spare  a moment?  . . . Listen.  I have  an  idea. 
Perhaps  you  will  think  it  absurd.  . . . Would  not  you  like 
for  once  in  a way  to  write  what  you  think  of  music  and  the 
musicos?  Instead  of  wasting  your  breath  in  haranguing  four 
dirty  knaves  of  your  band  who  are  good  for  nothing  but  scrap- 
ing and  blowing  into  bits  of  wood,  would  it  not  be  better  to 
address  the  general  public 

^^Not  better?  Would  I like?  . . . My  word!  And  when 
do  you  want  me  to  write  ? It  is  good  of  you  I . . .” 

I\e  a proposal  for  you.  . . . Some  friends  and  I : Adal- 
bert von  Waldhaus,  Eaphael  Goldenring,  Adolf  Mai,  and  Lucien 
Ehrenfeld, — ^have  started  a Eeview,  the  only  intelligent  Eeview 
in  the  town:  the  Dionysos. — (You  must  know  it.  . . .) — We  all 
admire  each  other  and  should  be  glad  if  you  would  join  us. 
Will  you  take  over  our  musical  criticism  ? 

Christophe  was  abashed  by  such  an  honor:  he  was  longing 
to  accept : he  was  only  afraid  of  not  being  worthy : he  could  not 
write. 

Oh ! come,^^  said  Mannheim,  I am  sure  you  can.  And 
besides,  as  soon  as  you  are  a critic  you  can  do  anything  you 
like.  You’ve  no  need  to  be  afraid  of  the  public.  The  public 
is  incredibly  stupid.  It  is  nothing  to  be  an  artist:  an  artist 
is  only  a sort  of  comedian : an  artist  can  be  hissed.  But  a critic 
has  the  right  to  say : ^ Hiss  me  that  man  1 ’ The  whole  audi- 
ence lets  him  do  its  thinking.  Think  whatever  you  like.  Only 
look  as  if  you  were  thinking  something.  Provided  you  give  the 
fools  their  food,  it  does  not  much  matter  what,  they  will  gulp 
down  anything.” 

In  the  end  Christophe  consented,  with  effusive  thanks.  He 
only  made  it  a condition  that  he  should  be  allowed  to  say  what 
he  liked. 

Of  course,  of  course,”  said  Mannheim.  Absolute  free- 
dom! We  are  all  free.” 


i 


REYOLT 


397 


He  looked  him  up  at  the  theater  once  more  after  the  perform- 
ance to  introduce  him  to  Adalbert  von  Waldhaus  and  his  friends. 
They  welcomed  him  warmly. 

With  the  exception  of  Waldhaus,  who  belonged  to  one  of 
the  noble  families  of  the  neighborhood,  they  were  all  Jews  and 
all  very  rich:  Mannheim  was  the  son  of  a banker:  Mai  the  son 
of  the  manager  of  a metallurgical  establishment:  and  Ehren- 
f eld’s  father  was  a great  jeweler.  Their  fathers  belonged  to 
the  older  generation  of  Jews,  industrious  and  acquisitive,  at- 
tached to  the  spirit  of  their  race,  building  their  fortunes  with 
keen  energy,  and  enjoying  their  energy  much  more  than  their 
fortunes.  Their  sons  seemed  to  be  made  to  destroy  what  their 
fathers  had  builded : they  laughed  at  family  prejudice  and  their 
ant-like  mania  for  economy  and  delving:  they  posed  as  artists, 
affected  to  despise  money  and  to  fling  it  out  of  window.  But 
in  reality  they  hardly  ever  let  it  slip  through  their  fingers : and 
in  vain  did  they  do  all  sorts  of  foolish  things : they  never  could 
altogether  lead  astray  their  lucidity  of  mind  and  practical  sense. 
For  the  rest,  their  parents  kept  an  eye  on  them,  and  reined 
them  in.  The  most  prodigal  of  them,  Mannheim,  would  sin- 
cerely have  given  away  all  that  he  had:  but  he  never  had  any- 
thing: and  although  he  was  always  loudly  inveighing  against 
his  father’s  niggardliness,  in  his  heart  he  laughed  at  it  and 
thought  that  he  was  right.  In  fine,  there  was  only  Waldhaus 
really  who  was  in  control  of  his  fortune,  and  went  into  it  whole- 
; heartedly  and  reckless  of  cost,  and  bore  that  of  the  Review. 
He  was  a poet.  He  wrote  “ PolymHres”  in  the  manner  of 
Arno  Holz  and  Walt  Whitman,  with  lines  alternately  very  long 
and  very  short,  in  which  stops,  double  and  triple  stops,  dashes, 
silences,  commas,  italics  and  italics,  played  a great  part.  And  so 
, did  alliteration  and  repetition — of  a word — of  a line — of  a 
' whole  phrase.  He  interpolated  words  of  every  language.  He 
wanted — (no  one  has  ever  known  why) — ^to  render  the  Cezanne 
• into  verse.  In  truth,  he  was  poetic  enough  and  had  a distin- 
guished taste  for  stale  things.  He  was  sentimental  and  dry, 
naive  and  foppish:  his  labored  verses  affected  a cavalier  careless- 
I ness.  He  would  have  been  a good  poet  for  men  of  the  world. 
But  there  are  too  many  of  the  kind  in  the  Reviews  and  artistic 
circles : and  he  wished  to  be  alone.  He  had  taken  it  into  his 


398 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


head  to  play  the  great  gentleman  who  is  above  the  prejudices 
of  his  caste.  He  had  more  prejudices  than  anybody.  He  did 
not  admit  their  existence.  He  took  a delight  in  surrounding 
himself  with  Jews  in  the  Eeview  which  he  edited,  to  rouse  the 
indignation  of  his  family,  who  were  very  anti-Semite,  and  to 
prove  his  own  freedom  of  mind  to  himself.  With  his  colleagues 
he  assumed  a tone  of  courteous  equality.  But  in  his  heart 
he  had  a calm  and  boundless  contempt  for  them.  He  was  not 
unaware  that  they  were  very  glad  to  make  use  of  his  name  and 
money : and  he  let  them  do  so  because  it  pleased  him  to  despise 
them. 

And  they  despised  him  for  letting  them  do  so : for  they  knew 
very  well  that  it  served  his  turn.  A fair  exchange.  Waldhaus 
lent  them  his  name  and  fortune:  and  they  brought  him  their 
talents,  their  eye  for  business  and  subscribers.  They  were  much 
tnore  intelligent  than  he.  Not  that  they  had  more  personality. 
They  had  perhaps  even  less.  But  in  the  little  town  they  were, 
as  the  Jews  are  everywhere  and  always, — ^by  the  mere  fact  of 
their  difference  of  race  which  for  centuries  has  isolated  them  . 
and  sharpened  their  faculty  for  making  observation — they  were 
the  most  advanced  in  mind,  the  most  sensible  of  the  absurdity  ; 
of  its  moldy  institutions  and  decrepit  thought.  Only,  as  their  ! 
character  was  less  free  than  their  intelligence,  it  did  not  help 
them,  while  they  mocked,  from  trying  rather  to  turn  those 
institutions  and  ideas  to  account  than  to  reform  them.  ' 
In  spite  of  their  independent  professions  of  faith,  they  were 
like  the  noble  Adalbert,  little  provincial  snobs,  rich,  idle  young  : 
men  of  family,  who  dabbled  and  flirted  with  letters  for  the  fun  i 
of  it.  They  were  very  glad  to  swagger  about  as  giant-killers:  . 
but  they  were  kindly  enough  and  never  slew  anybody  but  a ! 
few  inoffensive  people  or  those  whom  they  thought  could  never 
harm  them.  They  cared  nothing  for  setting  by  the  ears  a 
society  to  which  they  knew  very  well  they  would  one  day  return 
and  embrace  all  the  prejudices  which  they  had  combated.  And 
when  they  did  venture  to  make  a stir  on  a little  scandal,  or 
loudly  to  declare  war  on  some  idol  of  the  day, — who  was  begin- 
ning to  totter, — they  took  care  never  to  burn  their  boats:  in 
case  of  danger  they  re-embarked.  Whatever  then  might  be  the 
issue  of  the  campaign, — ^when  it  was  finished  it  was  a long^ 


EEVOLT 


399 


time  before  war  would  break  out  again:  the  Philistines  could 
sleep  in  peace.  All  that  these  new  Davidsbiindler  wanted  to 
do  was  to  make  it  appear  that  they  could  have  been  terrible  if 
they  had  so  desired:  but  they  did  not  desire.  They  preferred 
to  be  on  friendly  terms  with  artists  and  to  give  suppers  to 
actresses. 

Christophe  was  not  happy  in  such  a set.  They  were  always 
talking  of  women  and  horses:  and  their  talk  was  not  refined. 
They  were  stiff  and  formal.  Adalbert  spoke  in  a mincing,  slow 
voice,  with  exaggerated,  bored,  and  boring  politeness.  Adolf 
Mai,  the  secretary  of  the  Eeview,  a heavy,  thick-set,  bull-necked, 
brutal-looking  young  man,  always  pretended  to  be  in  the  right : 
he  laid  down  the  law,  never  listened  to  what  anybody  said, 
seemed  to  despise  the  opinion  of  the  person  he  was  talking  to, 
and  also  that  person.  Goldenring,  the  art  critic,  who  had  a 
twitch,  and  eyes  perpetually  winking  behind  his  large  spectacles, 
— no  doubt  in  imitation  of  the  painters  whose  society  he  cul- 
tivated, wore  long  hair,  smoked  in  silence,  mumbled  scraps  of 
sentences  which  he  never  finished,  and  made  vague  gestures  in 
the  air  with  his  thumb.  Ehrenfeld  was  little,  bald,  and  smil- 
ing, had  a fair  beard  and  a sensitive,  weary-looking  face,  a 
hooked  nose,  and  he  wrote  the  fashions  and  the  society  notes 
in  the  Eeview.  In  a silky  voice  he  used  to  talk  obscurely : he  had 
a wit,  though  of  a malignant  and  often  ignoble  kind. — All  these 
young  millionaires  were  anarchists,  of  course : when  a man  pos- 
sesses everything  it  is  the  supreme  luxury  for  him  to  deny  soci- 
ety : for  in  that  way  he  can  evade  his  responsibilities.  So  might 
a robber,  who  has  just  fleeced  a traveler,  say  to  him : “ What 
are  you  staying  for  ? Get  along ! I have  no  more  use  for  you.” 

Of  the  whole  bunch  Christophe  was  only  in  sympathy  with 
Mannheim : he  was  certainly  the  most  lively  of  the  five : he 
was  amused  by  everything  that  he  said  and  everything  that 
was  said  to  him:  stuttering,  stammering,  blundering,  snigger- 
ing, talking  nonsense,  he  was  incapable  of  following  an  argu- 
ment, or  of  knowing  exactly  what  he  thought  himself : but  he 
was  quite  kindly,  bearing  no  malice,  having  not  a spark  of 
ambition.  In  truth,  he  was  not  very  frank:  he  was  always 
playing  a part:  but  quite  innocently,  and  he  never  did  anybody 
'4  any  harm. 


400 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


He  espoused  all  sorts  of  strange  Utopias — most  often  gen- 
erous. He  was  too  subtle  and  too  skeptical  to  keep  his  head 
.even  in  his  enthusiasms,  and  he  never  compromised  himself  by 
applying  his  theories.  But  he  had  to  have  some  hobby : it  was 
a game  to  him,  and  he  was  always  changing  from  one  to  an- 
other. For  the  time  being  his  craze  was  for  kindness.  It  was 
not  enough  for  him  to  be  kind  naturally:  he  wished  to  be 
thought  kind:  he  professed  kindness,  and  acted  it.  Out  of 
reaction  against  the  hard,  dry  activity  of  his  kinsfolk,  and 
against  German  austerity,  militarism,  and  Philistinism,  he  was 
a Tolstoyan,  a Nirvanian,  an  evangelist,  a Buddhist, — ^he  was 
not  quite  sure  what, — an  apostle  of  a new  morality  that  was 
soft,  boneless,  indulgent,  placid,  easy-living,  effusively  forgiving 
every  sin,  especially  the  sins  of  the  flesh,  a morality  which  did 
not  conceal  its  predilection  for  those  sins  and  much  less  readily 
forgave  the  virtues — a morality  which  was  only  a compact  of 
pleasure,  a libertine  association  of  mutual  accommodations, 
which  amused  itself  by  donning  the  halo  of  sanctity.  There 
was  in  it  a spice  of  hypocrisy  which  was  a little  offensive  to 
delicate  palates,  and  would  have  even  been  frankly  nauseating 
if  it  had  taken  itself  seriously.  But  it  made  no  pretensions 
towards  that : it  merely  amused  itself.  His  blackguardly  Chris- 
tianity was  only  meant  to  serve  until  some  other  hobby  came 
along  to  take  its  place — no  matter  what:  brute  force,  imperial- 
ism, laughing  lions.^^ — Mannheim  was  always  playing  a part, 
playing  with  his  whole  heart : he  was  trying  on  all  the  feelings 
that  he  did  not  possess  before  becoming  a good  Jew  like  the 
rest  and  with  all  the  spirit  of  his  race.  He  was  very  sympa- 
thetic, and  extremely  irritating.  For  some  time  Christophe  was 
one  of  his  hobbies.  Mannheim  swore  by  him.  He  blew  his 
trumpet  everywhere.  He  dinned  his  praises  into  the  ears  of 
his  family.  According  to  him  Christophe  was  a genius, 
an  extraordinary  man,  who  made  strange  music  and  talked 
about  it  in  an  astonishing  fashion,  a witty  man — and  a 
handsome : fine  lips,  magnificent  teeth.  He  added  that  Chris- 
tophe admired  him. — One  evening  he  took  him  home  to  din- 
ner. Christophe  found  himself  talking  to  his  new  friend’s 
father,  Lothair  Mannheim,  the  banker,  and  Franz’s  sister, 
J udith. 


EEVOLT 


401 


It  was  the  first  time  that  he  had  been  in  a Jew’s  house.  Al- 
though there  were  many  Jews  in  the  little  town,  and  although 
they  played  an  important  part  in  its  life  by  reason  of  their 
wealth,  cohesion,  and  intelligence,  they  lived  a little  apart.  There 
were  always  rooted  prejudices  in  the  minds  of  the  people  and 
a secret  hostility  that  was  credulous  and  injurious  against  them. 
Christophe’s  family  shared  these  prejudices.  His  grandfather 
did  not  love  Jews:  but  the  irony  of  fate  had  decreed  that  his 
two  best  pupils  should  be  of  the  race — (one  had  become  a com- 
poser, the  other  a famous  virtuoso)  : for  there  had  been  moments 
when  he  was  fain  to  embrace  these  two  good  musicians : and 
then  he  would  remember  sadly  that  they  had  crucified  the  Lord : 
and  he  did  not  know  how  to  reconcile  his  two  incompatible 
currents  of  feeling.  But  in  the  end  he  did  embrace  them.  He 
was  inclined  to  think  that  the  Lord  would  forgive  them  because 
of  their  love  for  music. — Christophe’s  father,  Melchior,  who 
pretended  to  be  broad-minded,  had  had  fewer  scruples  about 
taking  money  from  the  Jews:  and  he  even  thought  it  good  to 
do  so:  but  he  ridiculed  them,  and  despised  them. — As  for  his 
mother,  she  was  not  sure  that  she  was  not  committing  a sin 
when  she  went  to  cook  for  them.  Those  whom  she  had  had  to 
do  with  were  disdainful  enough  with  her:  but  she  had  no 
grudge  against  them,  she  bore  nobody  any  ill-will : she  was 
filled  with  pity  for  these  unhappy  people  whom  God  had  damned : 
sometimes  she  would  be  filled  with  compassion  when  she  saw 
the  daughter  of  one  of  them  go  by  or  heard  the  merry  laughter 
of  their  children. 

“ So  pretty  she  is ! . . . Such  pretty  children ! . . . How 
dreadful ! . . .”  she  would  think. 

She  dared  not  say  anything  to  Christophe,  when  he  told 
her  that  he  was  going  to  dine  with  the  Mannheims:  but  her 
heart  sank.  She  thought  that  it  was  unnecessary  to  believe 
' everything  bad  that  was  said  about  the  Jews — (people  speak 
1 ill  of  everybody) — and  that  there  are  honest  people  everywhere, 
i but  that  it  was  better  and  more  proper  to'  keep  themselves  to 
themselves,  the  Jews  on  their  side,  the  Christians  on  theirs. 

Christophe  shared  none  of  these  prejudices.  In  his  perpetual 
reaction  against  his  surroundings  he  was  rather  attracted  to- 
f wards  the  different  race.  But  he  hardly  knew  them.  He  had 


402 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


only  come  in  contact  with  the  more  vulgar  of  the  Jews:  little 
shopkeepers,  the  populace  swarming  in  certain  streets  between 
the  Ehine  and  the  cathedral,  forming,  with  the  gregarious  in- 
stinct of  all  human  beings,  a sort  of  little  ghetto.  He  had  often 
strolled  through  the  neighborhood,  catching  sight  of  and  feeling 
a sort  of  sympathy  with  certain  types  of  women  with  hollow 
cheeks,  and  full  lips,  and  wide  cheek-bones,  a da  Vinci  smile, 
rather  depraved,  while  the  coarse  language  and  shrill  laughter 
destroyed  this  harmony  that  was  in  their  faces  when  in  repose. 
Even  in  the  dregs  of  the  people,  in  those  large-headed,  beady- 
eyed  creatures  with  their  bestial  faces,  their  thick-set,  squat 
bodies,  those  degenerate  descendants  of  the  most  noble  of  all 
peoples,  even  in  that  thick,  fetid  muddiness  there  were  strange 
phosphorescent  gleams,  like  will-o’-the-wisps  dancing  over  a 
swamp:  marvelous  glances,  minds  subtle  and  brilliant,  a subtle 
electricity  emanating  from  the  ooze  which  fascinated  and  dis- 
turbed Christophe.  He  thought  that  hidden  deep  were  fine 
souls  struggling,  great  hearts  striving  to  break  free  from  the 
dung : and  he  would  have  liked  to  meet  them,  and  to  aid  them : 
without  knowing  them,  he  loved  them,  while  he  was  a little 
fearful  of  them.  And  he  had  never  had  any  opportunity  of 
meeting  the  best  of  the  Jews. 

His  dinner  at  the  Mannheims’  had  for  him  the  attraction  of 
novelty  and  something  of  that  of  forbidden  fruit.  The  Eve 
who  gave  him  the  fruit  sweetened  its  fiavor.  From  the  first 
moment  Christophe  had  eyes  only  for  Judith  Mannheim.  She 
was  utterly  different  from  all  the  women  he  had  known.  Tall 
and  slender,  rather  thin,  though  solidly  built,  with  her  face 
framed  in  her  black  hair,  not  long,  but  thick  and  curled  low 
on  her  head,  covering  her  temples  and  her  broad,  golden  brow ; 
rather  short-sighted,  with  large  pupils,  and  slightly  prominent 
eyes : with  a largish  nose  and  wide  nostrils,  thin  cheeks,  a heavy 
chin,  strong  coloring,  she  had  a fine  profile  showing  much 
energy  and  alertness : full  face,  her  expression  was  more  chang- 
ing, uncertain,  complex : her  eyes  and  her  cheeks  were  irregular. 
She  seemed  to  give  revelation  of  a strong  race,  and  in  the  mold 
of  that  race,  roughly  thrown  together,  were  manifold  ineon- 
gruous  elements,  of  doubtful  and  unequal  quality,  beautiful  and 
vulgar  at  the  same  time.  Her  beauty  lay  especially  in  her  silent 


EEVOLT 


403 


lips,  and  in  her  eyes,  in  which  there  seemed  to  be  greater  depth 
by  reason  of  their  short-sightedness,  and  darker  by  reason  of 
the  bluish  markings  round  them. 

It  needed  to  be  more  used  than  Christophe  was  to  those  eyes, 
which  are  more  those  of  a race  than  of  an  individual,  to  be 
able  to  read  through  the  limpidity  that  unveiled  them  with 
such  vivid  quality,  the  real  soul  of  the  woman  whom  he  thus 
encountered.  It  was  the  soul  of  the  people  of  Israel  that  he 
saw  in  her  sad  and  burning  eyes,  the  soul  that,  unknown  to 
them,  shone  forth  from  them.  He  lost  himself  as  he  gazed  into 
them.  It  was  only  after  some  time  that  he  was  able,  after  los- 
ing his  way  again  and  again,  to  strike  the  track  again  on  that 
oriental  sea. 

She  looked  at  him:  and  nothing  could  disturb  the  clearness 
of  her  gaze:  nothing  in  his  Christian  soul  seemed  to  escape 
her.  He  felt  that.  Under  the  seduction  of  the  woman^s  eyes 
upon  him  he  was  conscious  of  a virile  desire,  clear  and  cold, 
which  stirred  in  him  brutally,  indiscreetly.  There  was  no  evil 
in  the  brutality  of  it.  She  took  possession  of  him:  not  like  a 
coquette,  whose  desire  is  to  seduce  without  caring  whom  she  se- 
duces. Had  she  been  a coquette  she  would  have  gone  to  greatest 
lengths : but  she  knew  her  power,  and  she  left  it  to  her  natural 
instinct  to  make  use  of  it  in  its  own  way, — especially  when  she 
had  so  easy  a prey  as  Christophe. — What  interested  her  more 
was  to  know  her  adversary — (any  man,  any  stranger,  was  an 
adversary  for  her, — an  adversary  with  whom  later  on,  if  occa- 
sion served,  she  could  sign  a compact  of  alliance). — She  wished 
to  know  his  quality.  Life  being  a game,  in  which  the  cleverest 
wins,  it  was  a matter  of  reading  her  opponent's  cards  and  of 
not  showing  her  own.  When  she  succeeded  she  tasted  the  sweets 
of  victory.  It  mattered  little  whether  she  could  turn  it  to  any 
account.  It  was  purely  for  her  pleasure.  She  had  a passion 
for  intelligence:  not  abstract  intelligence,  although  she  had 
brains  enough,  if  she  had  liked,  to  have  succeeded  in  any 
; branch  of  knowledge  and  would  have  made  a much  better  suc- 
cessor to  Lothair  Mannheim,  the  banker,  than  her  brother.  But 
she  preferred  inte)ligence  in  the  quick,  the  sort  of  intelligence 
which  studies  men.  She  loved  to  pierce  through  to  the  soul 
land  to  weigh  its  value — (she  gave  as  scrupulous  an  attention 


404 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


to  it  as  the  Jewess  of  Matsys  to  the  weighing  of  her  gold) — 
with  marvelous  divination  she  could  find  the  weak  spot  in  the 
armor,  the  imperfections  and  foibles  which  are  the  key  to  the 
soul, — she  could  lay  her  hands  on  its  secrets;  it  was  her  way 
of  feeling  her  sway  over  it.  But  she  never  dallied  with  her 
victory:  she  never  did  anything  with  her  prize.  Once  her 
curiosity  and  her  vanity  were  satisfied  she  lost  her  interest 
and  passed  on  to  another  specimen.  All  her  power  was  sterile. 
There  was  something  of  death  in  her  living  soul.  She  had 
the  genius  of  curiosity  and  boredom. 

And  so  she  looked  at  Christophe  and  he  looked  at  her.  She 
hardly  spoke.  An  imperceptible  smile  was  enough,  a little 
movement  of  the  corners  of  her  mouth : Christophe  was  hypno- 
tized by  her.  Every  now  and  then  her  smile  would  fade  away, 
her  face  would  become  cold,  her  eyes  indifferent:  she  would 
attend  to  the  meal  or  speak  coldly  to  the  servants:  it  was  as  ^ 
though  she  were  no  longer  listening.  Then  her  eyes  would  light  : 
up  again : and  a few  words  coming  pat  would  show  that  she  : 
had  heard  and  understood  everything. 

She  coldly  examined  her  brother’s  judgment  of  Christophe:  > 
she  knew  Franz’s  crazes : her  irony  had  had  fine  sport  when 
she  saw  Christophe  appear,  whose  looks  and  distinction  had  been 
vaunted  by  her  brother — (it  seemed  to  her  that  Franz  had 
a special  gift  for  seeing  facts  as  they  are  not:  or  perhaps  he 
only  thought  it  a paradoxical  joke). — ^But  when  she  looked  at  ■ 
Christophe  more  closely  she  recognized  that  what  Franz  had  ; 
said  was  not  altogether  false ; and  as  she  went  on  with  her  ' 
scrutiny  she  discovered  in  Christophe  a vague,  unbalanced,  ; 
though  robust  and  bold  power ; that  gave  her  pleasure,  for  she  ; 
knew,  better  than  any,  the  rarity  of  power.  She  was  able  to 
make  Christophe  talk  about  whatever  she  liked,  and  reveal  his 
thoughts,  and  display  the  limitations  and  defects  of  his  mind: 
she  made  him  play  the  piano : she  did  not  love  music  but  she 
understood  it:  and  she  saw  Christophe’s  musical  originality, 
although  his  music  had  roused  no  sort  of  emotion  in  her.  With- 
out the  least  change  in  the  coldness  of  her  manner,  with  a few  ^ 
short,  apt,  and  certainly  not  flattering,  remarks  she  showed  her 
growing  interest  in  Christophe. 


EEVOLT 


405 


Christophe  saw  it:  and  he  was  proud  of  it:  for  he  felt  the 
worth  of  such  judgment  and  the  rarity  of  her  approbation. 
He  made  no  secret  of  his  desire  to  win  it:  and  he  set  about  it 
so  naively  as  to  make  the  three  of  them  smile:  he  talked  only 
to  Judith  and  for  Judith:  he  was  as  unconcerned  with  the 
others  as  though  they  did  not  exist. 

Franz  watched  him  as  he  talked : he  followed  his  every  word, 
with  his  lips  and  eyes,  with  a mixture  of  admiration  and  amuse- 
ment : and  he  laughed  aloud  as  he  glanced  at  his  father  and  his 
sister,  who  listened  impassively  and  pretended  not  to  notice 


him. 

Lothair  Mannheim, — a tall  old  man,  heavily  built,  stooping  a 
little,  red-faced,  with  gray  hair  standing  straight  up  on  end, 
very  black  mustache  and  eyebrows,  a heavy  though  energetic 
and  jovial  face,  which  gave  the  impression  of  great  vitality — 
had  also  studied  Christophe  during  the  first  part  of  the  dinner, 
slyly  but  good-naturedly:  and  he  too  had  recognized  at  once 
that  there  was  something”  in  the  boy.  But  he  was  not  in- 
terested in  music  or  musicians : it  was  not  in  his  line : he  knew 
nothing  about  it  and  made  no  secret  of  his  ignorance : he  even 
boasted  of  it — (when  a man  of  that  sort  confesses  his  ignorance 
of  anything  he  does  so  to  feed  his  vanity). — As  Christophe  had 
clearly  shown  at  once,  with  a rudeness  in  which  there  was  no 
shade  of  malice,  that  he  could  without  regret  dispense  with  the 
society  of  the  banker,  and  that  the  society  of  Fraulein  Judith 
Mannheim  would  serve  nerfectly  to  fill  his  evening,  old  Lothair 
in  some  amusement  had  taken  his  seat  by  the  fire : he  read  his 
paper,  listening  vaguely  and  ironically  to  Christophers  crotchets 
and  his  queer  music,  which  sometimes  made  him  laugh  inwardly 
at  the  idea  that  there  could  be  people  who  understood  it  and 
found  pleasure  in  it.  He  did  not  trouble  to  follow  the  con- 
(versation:  he  relied  on  his  daughter’s  cleverness  to  tell  him 
I exactly  what  the  newcomer  was  worth.  She  discharged  her  duty 
j conscientiously. 

j When  Christophe  had  gone  Lothair  asked  Judith: 

^^Well,  you  probed  him  enough:  what  do  you  think  of  the 
j artist  ? ” 

She  laughed,  thought  for  a moment,  reckoned  up,  and  said: 
^^He  is  a little  cracked:  but  he  is  not  stupid.” 


406 


JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 


“ Good,”  said  Lothair.  “ I thought  so  too.  He  will  succeed, 
then?” 

“ Yes,  I think  so.  He  has  power.” 

“ Very  good,”  said  Lothair  with  the  magnificent  logic  of  the 
strong  who  are  only  interested  in  the  strong,  “we  must  help 
him.” 

Christophe  went  away  filled  with  admiration  for  Judith 
Mannheim.  He  was  not  in  love  with  her  as  Judith  thought. 
They  were  both — she  with  her  subtlety,  he  with  his  instinct 
which  took  the  place  of  mind  in  him, — mistaken  about  each 
other.  Christophe  was  fascinated  by  the  enigma  and  the  intense 
activity  of  her  mind : but  he  did  not  love  her.  His  eyes  and 
his  intelligence  were  ensnared:  his  heart  escaped. — Why? — It 
were  difficult  to  tell.  Because  he  had  caught  a glimpse  of  some 
doubtful,  disturbing  quality  in  her? — In  other  circumstances  ' 
that  would  have  been  a reason  the  more  for  loving:  love  is 
never  stronger  than  when  it  goes  out  to  one  who  will  make  it 
suffer. — If  Christophe  did  not  love  Judith  it  was  not  the  fault 
of  either  of  them.  The  real  reason,  humiliating  enough  for , 
both,  was  that  he  was  still  too  near  his  last  love.  Experience ; 
had  not  made  him  wiser.  But  he  had  loved  Ada  so  much,  he  ■ 
had  consumed  so  much  faith,  force,  and  illusion  in  that  passion 
that  there  was  not  enough  left  for  a new  passion.  Before  an- , 
other  flame  could  be  kindled  he  would  have  to  build  a new  pyre  : 
in  his  heart : short  of  that  there  could  only  be  a few  flickerings,  j 
remnants  of  the  conflagration  that  had  escaped  by  chance,  which  | 
asked  only  to  be  allowed  to  burn,  cast  a brief  and  brilliant  light ; 
and  then  died  down  for  want  of  food.  Six  months  later,  per-i 
haps,  he  might  have  loved  Judith  blindly.  Now  he  saw  ini 
her  only  a friend, — a rather  disturbing  friend  in  truth — but 
he  tried  to  drive  his  uneasiness  back:  it  reminded  him  of  Ada: 
there  was  no  attraction  in  that  memory:  he  preferred  not  to 
think  of  it.  What  attracted  him  in  Judith  was  everything  in 
her  which  was  different  from  other  women,  not  that  which  she 
had  in  common  with  them.  She  was  the  first  intelligent  woman 
he  had  met.  She  was  intelligent  from  head  to  foot.  Even  her 
beauty — ^her  gestures,  her  movements,  her  features,  the  fold  of 
her  lips,  her  eyes,  her  hands,  her  slender  elegance — was  the 


EEVOLT 


407 


reflection  of  her  intelligence:  her  body  was  molded  by  her  in- 
telligence: without  her  intelligence  she  would  have  passed  un- 
aotiwd : and  no  doubt  she  would  even  have  been  thought  plain 
by  most  people.  Her  intelligence  delighted  Christophe.  He 
thought  it  larger  and  more  free  than  it  was:  he  could  not  yet 
know  how  deceptive  it  was.  He  longed  ardently  to  confide  in 
her  and  to  impart  his  ideas  to  her.  He  had  never  found  any- 
body to  take  an  interest  in  his  dreams:  he  was  turned  in  upon 
himself : what  joy  then  to  find  a woman  to  be  his  friend ! That 
he  had  not  a sister  had  been  one  of  the  sorrows  of  his  child- 
hood: it  seemed  to  him  that  a sister  would  have  understood 
him  more  than  a brother  could  have  done.  And  when  he  met 
Judith  he  felt  that  childish  and  illusory  hope  of  having  a 
brotherly  love  spring  up  in  him.  Not  being  in  love,  love  seemed 
to  him  a poor  thing  compared  with  friendship. 

Judith  felt  this  little  shade  of  feeling  and  was  hurt  by  it. 
She  was  not  in  love  with  Christophe,  and  as  she  had  excited 
other  passions  in  other  young  men  of  the  town,  rich  young 
men  of  better  position,  she  could  not  feel  any  great  satisfaction 
in  knowing  Christophe  to  be  in  love  with  her.  But  it  piqued 
her  to  know  that  he  was  not  in  love.  No  doubt  she  was  pleased 
with  him  for  confiding  his  plans : she  was  not  surprised  by  it : 
d)ut  it  was  a little  mortifying  for  her  to  know  that  she  could 
only  exercise  an  intellectual  influence  over  him — (an  unreason- 
ling  influence  is  much  more  precious  to  a woman). — She  did 
not  even  exercise  her  influence : Christophe  only  courted  her 
mind.  Judith’s  intellect  was  imperious.  She  was  used  to 
molding  to  her  will  the  soft  thoughts  of  the  young  men  of  her 
acquaintance.  As  she  knew  their  mediocrity  she  found  no  pleas- 
ure in  holding  sway  over  them.  With  Christophe  the  pursuit 
was  more  interesting  because  more  difficult.  She  was  not  in- 
terested in  his  projects : but  she  would  have  liked  to  direct  his, 
originality  of  thought,  his  ill-grown  power,  and  to  make  them 
good, — in  her  own  way,  of  course,  and  not  in  Christophe’s, 
which  she  did  not  take  the  trouble  to  understand.  She  saw 
at  once  that  she  could  not  succeed  without  a struggle : she  had 
marked  down  in  Christophe  all  sorts  of  notions  and  ideas  which 
she  thought  childish  and  extravagant : they  were  weeds  to  her : 
i she  tried  hard  to  eradicate  them.  She  did  not  get  rid  of  a 


408 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


single  one.  She  did  not  gain  the  least  satisfaction  for  her 
vanity.  Christophe  was  intractable.  Not  being  in  love  he  had 
no  reason  for  surrendering  his  ideas  to  her. 

She  grew  keen  on  the  game  and  instinctively  tried  for  some 
time  to  overcome  him.  Christophe  was  very  nearly  taken  in 
again  in  spite  of  his  lucidity  of  mind  at  that  time.  Men  are 
easily  taken  in  by  any  flattery  of  their  vanity  or  their  desires: 
and  an  artist  is  twice  as  easy  to  trick  as  any  other  man  because 
he  has  more  imagination.  Judith  had  only  to  draw  Christophe 
into  a dangerous  flirtation  to  bowl  him  over  once  more  more 
thoroughly  than  ever.  But  as  usual  she  soon  wearied  of  the 
game:  she  found  that  such  a conquest  was  hardly  worth  while: 
Christophe  was  already  boring  her:  she  did  not  understand 
him. 

She  did  not  understand  him  beyond  a certain  point.  Up  to 
that  she  understood  everything.  Her  admirable  intelligence  ’ 
could  not  take  her  beyond  it : she  needed  a heart,  or  in  default ; 
of  that  the  thing  which  could  give  the  illusion  of  one  for  a 
time : love.  She  understood  Christophers  criticism  of  people  J 
and  things : it  amused  her  and  seemed  to  her  true  enough : she 
had  thought  much  the  same  herself.  But  what  she  did  not  r 
understand  was  that  such  ideas  might  have  an  influence  on 
practical  life  when  it  might  be  dangerous  or  awkward  to 
apply  them.  The  attitude  of  revolt  against  everybody  and 
everything  which  Christophe  had  taken  up  led  to  nothing : he 
could  not  imagine  that  he  was  going  to  reform  the  world.  . . . ^ 
And  then  ? ...  It  was  waste  of  time  to  knock  one^s  head  against  i 
a wall.  A clever  man  judges  men,  laughs  at  them  in  secret,  ‘ 
despises  them  a little:  but  he  does  as  they  do — only  a little: 
better : it  is  the  only  way  of  mastering  them.  Thought  is  one  ■ 
world:  action  is  another.  What  boots  it  for  a man  to  be  the 
victim  of  his  thoughts?  Since  men  are  so  stupid  as  not  to 
be  able  to  bear  the  truth,  why  force  it  on  them?  To  accept 
their  weakness,  to  seem  to  bow  to  it,  and  to  feel  free  to  despise 
them  in  his  heart,  is  there  not  a secret  joy  in  that?  The  joy 
of  a clever  slave  ? Certainly.  But  all  the  world  is  a slave : 
there  is  no  getting  away  from  that : it  is  useless  to  protest 
against  it:  better  to  be  a slave  deliberately  of  one^s  own  free 
will  and  to  avoid  jidiculous  and  futile  conflict.  Besides,  the 


EEVOLT 


409 


worst  slavery  of  all  is  to  be  the  slave  of  one’s  own  thoughts 
md  to  sacrifice  everything  to  them.  There  is  no  need  to  deceive 
one’s  self.— She  saw  clearly  that  if  Christophe  went  on,  as 
be  seemed  determined  to  do,  with  his  aggressive  refusal  to  com- 
promise with  the  prejudices  of  German  art  and  German  mind, 
he  would  turn  everybody  against  him,  even  his  patrons;  he 
was  courting  inevitable  ruin.  She  did  not  understand  why  he 
so  obstinately  held  out  against  himself,  and  so  took  pleasure  in 

digging  his  own  ruin.  ,-,,^1,114. 

To  have  understood  him  she  would  have  had  to  be  able  to 
understand  that  his  aim  was  not  success  but  his  own  faith. 
He  believed  in  art ; he  believed  in  Ms  art : he  believed  in  hini- 
self  as  realities  not  only  superior  to  interest,  but  also  to  his 
own  life.  When  he  was  a little  out  of  patience  with  her  re- 
marks and  told  her  so  in  his  naive  arrogance,  she  just  shrugged 
her  shoulders:  she  did  not  take  him  seriously.  She  thought  he 
was  using  big  words  such  as  she  was  accustomed  to  hearing 
from  her  brother  when  he  announced  periodically  his  absurd 
and  ridiculous  resolutions,  which  he  never  hy  any  chance  put 
into  practice.  And  then  when  she  saw  that  Christophe  really 
believed  in  what  he  said,  she  thought  him  mad  and  lost  interest 

After  that  she  took  no  trouble  to  appear  to  advantage,  and 
she  showed  herself  as  she  was:  much  more  German,  and  averap 
German,  than  she  seemed  to  be  at  first,  more  perhaps  than  she 
thought.— The  Jews  are  quite  erroneously  reproached  with  not 
belonging  to  any  nation  and  with  forming  from  one  end  of 
Europe  to  the  other  a homogeneous  people  impervious  to  the 
influence  of  the  different  races  with  which  they  have  pitched 
i their  tents.  In  reality  there  is  no  race  which  more  easily  takes 
ion  the  impress  of  the  country  through  which  it  passes;  and 
;if  there  are  many  characteristics  in  common  between  a French 
I Jew  and  a German  Jew,  there  are  many  more  different  charac- 
Iteristics  derived  from  their  new  country,  of  which  with  in- 
I credible  rapidity  they  assimilate  the  habits  of  mind : more  the 
hahits  than  the  mind,  indeed.  But  habit,  which  is  a second 
nature  to  all  men,  is  in  most  of  them  all  the  nature  that  they 
have,  and  the  result  is  that  the  majority  of  the  autochthonous 
citizens  of  any  country  have  very  little  right  to  reproach  the 


410 


JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 


Jews  with  the  lack  of  a profound  and  reasonable  national  feel- 
ing of  which  they  themselves  possess  nothing  at  all. 

The  women,  always  more  sensible  to  external  influences,  more 
easily  adaptable  to  the  conditions  of  life  and  to  change  with 
them — Jewish  women  throughout  Europe  assume  the  physical 
and  moral  customs,  often  exaggerating  them,  of  the  country 
in  which  they  live, — without  losing  the  shadow  and  the  strange 
fluid,  solid,  and  haunting  quality  of  their  race. — This  idea  came 
to  Christophe.  At  the  Mannheims’  he  met  Judith’s  aunts, 
cousins,  and  friends.  Though  there  was  little  of  the  German 
in  their  eyes,  ardent  and  too  close  together,  their  noses  going 
down  to  their  lips,  their  strong  features,  their  red  blood  cours- 
ing under  their  coarse  brown  skins:  though  almost  all  of  them 
seemed  hardly  at  all  fashioned  to  be  German — they  were  all 
extraordinarily  German:  they  had  the  same  way  of  talking,  of 
dressing, — of  overdressing. — Judith  was  much  the  best  of  them' 
all : and  comparison  with  them  made  all  that  was  exceptional- 
in  her  intelligence,  all  that  she  had  made  of  herself,  shine  forth.^; 
But  she  had  most  of  their  faults  just  as  much  as  they.  She! 
was  much  more  free  than  they  morally — almost  absolutely  free  ■ 
— ^but  socially  she  was  no  more  free:  or  at  least  her  practical; 
sense  usurped  the  place  of  her  freedom  of  mind.  She  believed! 
in  society,  in  class,  in  prejudice,  because  when  all  was  told  she! 
found  them  to  her  advantage.  It  was  idle  for  her  to  laugh  at 
the  German  spirit:  she  followed  it  like  any  German.  Her  in-; 
telligence  made  her  see  the  mediocrity  of  some  artist  of  reputa-i 
tion : but  she  respected  him  none  the  less  because  of  his  reputa-j 
tion : and  if  she  met  him  personally  she  would  admire  him : for' 
her  vanity  was  flattered.  She  had  no  love  for  the  works  of; 
Brahms  and  she  suspected  him  of  being  an  artist  of  the  second; 
rank : but  his  fame  impressed  her : and  as  she  had  received  flve 
or  six  letters  from  him  the  result  was  that  she  thought  him 
the  greatest  musician  of  the  day.  She  had  no  doubt  as  to 
Christophe’s  real  worth,  or  as  to  the  stupidity  of  Lieutenant 
Hetlev  von  Fleischer : but  she  was  more  flattered  by  fhe  homage 
the  lieutenant  deigned  to  pay  to  her  millions  than  by  Chris- 
tophe’s friendship : for  a dull  officer  is  a man  of  another  caste : 
it  is  more  difficult  for  a German  Jewess  to  enter  that  caste  than 
for  any  other  woman.  Although  she  was  not  deceived  by  these 


I 


EEVOLT 


411 


feudal  follies,  and  although  she  knew  quite  well  that  if  she  did 
marry  Lieutenant  Detlev  von  Fleischer  she  would  be  doing  him 
a great  honor,  she  set  herself  to  the  conquest:  she  stooped  so 
low  as  to  make  eyes  at  the  fool  and  to  flatter  his  vanity.  The 
proud  Jewess,  who  had  a thousand  reasons  for  her  pride — the 
clever,  disdainful  daughter  of  Mannheim  the  banker  lowered 
herself,  and  acted  like  any  of  the  little  middle-class  German 
women  whom  she  despised. 

That  experience  was  short.  Christophe  lost  his  illusions  about 
Judith  as  quickly  as  he  had  found  them.  It  is  only  just  to 
say  that  Judith  did  nothing  to  preserve  them.  As  soon  as  a 
woman  of  that  stamp  has  judged  a man  she  is  done  with  him : he 
ceases  to  exist  for  her:  she  will  not  see  him  again.  And  she 
no  more  hesitates  to  reveal  her  soul  to  him,  with  calm  impudence, 
that  to  appear  naked  before  her  dog,  her  cat,  or  any  other 
domestic  animal.  Christophe  saw  Judith’s  egoism  and  cold- 
ness, and  the  mediocrity  of  her  character.  He  had  not  had 
time  to  be  absolutely  caught.  But  he  had  been  enough  caught  to 
make  him  suffer  and  to  bring  him  to  a sort  of  fever.  He  did 
not  so  much  love  Judith  as  what  she  might  have  been — what 
she  ought  to  have  been.  Her  fine  eyes  exercised  a melancholy 
fascination  over  him:  he  could  not  forget  them:  although  he 
knew  now  the  drab  soul  that  slumbered  in  their  depths  he  went 
on  seeing  them  as  he  wished  to  see  them,  as  he  had  first  seen 
them.  It  was  one  of  those  loveless  hallucinations  of  love  which 
take  up  so  much  of  the  hearts  of  artists  when  they  are  not 
entirely  absorbed  by  their  work.  A passing  face  is  enough  to 
create  it:  they  see  in  it  all  the  beauty  that  is  in  it,  unknown 
to  its  indifferent  possessor.  And  they  love  it  the  more  for  its 
indifference.  They  love  it  as  a beautiful  thing  that  must  die 
without  any  man  having  known  its  worth  or  that  it  even  had 
life. 

Perhaps  he  was  deceiving  himself,  and  Judith  Mannheim 
could  not  have  been  anything  more  than  she  was.  But  for  a 
moment  Christophe  had  believed  in  her:  and  her  charm  en- 
dured: he  could  not  judge  her  impartially.  All  her  beauty 
seemed  to  him  to  be  hers,  to  be  herself.  All  that  was  vulgar 
in  her  he  cast  back  upon  her  twofold  race,  Jew  and  German, 


412 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


and  perhaps  he  was  more  indignant  with  the  German  than  with 
the  Jew,  for  it  had  made  him  suffer  more.  As  he  did  not  yet 
know  any  other  nation,  the  German  spirit  was  for  him  a sort 
of  scapegoat:  he  put  upon  it  all  the  sins  of  the  world.  That 
Judith  had  deceived  him  was  a reason  the  more  for  combating 
it:  he  could  not  forgive  it  for  having  crushed  the  life  out  of 
such  a soul. 

Such  was  his  first  encounter  with  Israel.  He  had  hoped 
much  from  it.  He  had  hoped  to  find  in  that  strong  race  living 
apart  from  the  rest  an  ally  for  his  fight.  He  lost  that  hope. 
With  the  fiexibility  of  his  passionate  intuition,  which  made  him 
leap  from  one  extreme  to  another,  he  persuaded  himself  that 
the  Jewish  race  was  much  weaker  than  it  was  said  to  be,  and 
much  more  open — much  too  open — to  outside  infiuence.  It 
had  all  its  own  weaknesses  augmented  by  those  of  the  rest  of 
the  world  picked  up  on  its  way.  It  was  not  in  them  that  he 
could  find  assistance  in  working  the  lever  of  his  art.  Bather 
he  was  in  danger  of  being  swallowed  with  them  in  the  sands 

of  the  desert.  ! 

Having  seen  the  danger,  and  not  feeling  sure  enough  of  him- 
self to  brave  it,  he  suddenly  gave  up  going  to  the  Mannheims’i 
He  was  invited  several  times  and  begged  to  be  excused  without 
giving  any  reason.  As  up  till  then  he  had  shown  an  ex- 
cessive eagerness  to  accept,  such  a sudden  change  was  remarked . 
it  was  attributed  to  his  « originality  ” : but  the  Mannheims  had 
no  doubt  that  the  fair  Judith  had  something  to  do  with  itj 
Lothair  and  Franz  joked  about  it  at  dinner.  Judith  shrugge(| 
her  shoulders  and  said  it  was  a fine  conquest,  and  she  askeq 
her  brother  frigidly  not  to  make  such  a fuss  about  it.  Bui 
she  left  no  stone  unturned  in  her  effort  to  bring  Christoph^ 
back.  She  wrote  to  him  for  some  musical  information  which 
no  one  else  could  supply : and  at  the  end  of  her  letter  she  made 
a friendly  allusion  to  the  rarity  of  his  visits  and  the  pleasure 
it  would  give  them  to  see  him.  Christophe  replied,  giving  the 
desired  information,  said  that  he  was  very  busy,  and  did  noi 
<ro.  They  met  sometimes  at  the  theater.  Christophe  obstinately 
looked  away  from  the  Mannheims’  box:  and  he  would  pretenc 
not  to  see  Judith,  who  held  herself  in  readiness  to  give  hm 
her  most  charming  smile.  She  did  not  persist.  As  she  did  no 


I 


EEVOLT 


413 


count  on  him  for  anything  she  was  annoyed  that  the  little 
artist  should  let  her  do  all  the  labor  of  their  friendship,  and 
pure  waste  at  that.  If  he  wanted  to  come,  he  would.  If  not — 
oh,  well,  they  could  do  without  him.  . . . 

They  did  without  him:  and  his  absence  left  no  very  great 
gap  in  the  Mannheims’  evenings.  But  in  spite  of  herself  Judith 
was  really  annoyed  with  Christophe.  It  seemed  natural  enough 
not  to  bother  about  him  when  he  was  there:  and  she  could 
allow  him  to  show  his  displeasure  at  being  neglected : but  that 
his  displeasure  should  go  so  far  as  to  break  otf  their  relation- 
ship altogether  seemed  to  her  to  show  a stupid  pride  and  a 
heart  more  egoistic  than  in  love. — Judith  could  not  tolerate 
her  own  faults  in  others. 

She  followed  the  more  attentively  everything  that  Christophe 
did  and  wrote.  Without  seeming  to  do  so,  she  would  lead  her 
brother  to  the  subject  of  Christophe:  she  would  make  him  tell 
her  of  his  intercourse  with  him:  and  she  would  punctuate  the 
narrative  with  clever  ironic  comment,  which  never  let  any 
ridiculous  feature  escape,  and  gradually  destroyed  Franz’s  en- 
thusiasm without  his  knowing  it. 

At  first  all  went  well  with  the  Eeview.  Christophe  had  not 
yet  perceived  the  mediocrity  of  his  colleagues:  and,  since  he 
was  one  of  them,  they  hailed  him  as  a genius.  Mannheim, 
who  had  discovered  him,  went  everywhere  repeating  that  Chris- 
tophe was  an  admirable  critic,  though  he  had  never  read  any- 
thing he  had  written,  that  he  had  mistaken  his  vocation,  and 
that  he,  Mannheim,  had  revealed  it  to  him.  They  advertised 
his  articles  in  mysterious  terms  which  roused  curiosity : and  his 
first  effort  was  in  fact  like  a stone  falling  into  a duck-pond  in 
the  atony  of  the  little  town.  It  was  called:  Too  much  music. 

“Too  much  music,  too  much  drinking,  too  much  eating,” 
wrote  Christophe.  “Bating,  drinking,  hearing,  without  hun- 
ger, thirst,  or  need,  from  sheer  habitual  gormandizing.  Liv- 
ing like  Strasburg  geese.  These  people  are  sick  from  a diseased* 
appetite.  It  matters  little  what  you  give  them : Tristram  or  the 
Trompeter  von  Sakhingen,  Beethoven  or  Mascagni,  a fugue  or 
a two-step,  Adam,  Bach,  Puccini,  Mozart,  or  Marschner : they  do 
not  know  what  they  are  eating : the  great  thing  is  to  eat.  They 
find  no  pleasure  in  it.  Look  at  them  at  a concert.  Talk  of 


4:14 


JEAN-CHKISTOPHE 


German  gaiety!  These  people  do  not  know  what  gaiety  means; 
they  are  always  gay ! Their  gaiety,  like  their  sorrow,  drops  like 
rain:  their  joy  is  dust:  there  is  neither  life  nor  force  in  it. 
They  would  stay  for  hours  smilingly  and  vaguely  drinking  in 
sounds,  sounds,  sounds.  They  think  of  nothing : they  feel  noth- 
ing: they  are  sponges.  True  joy,  or  true  sorrow— strength— 
is  not  drawn  out  over  hours  like  beer  from  a cask.  They  take 
you  by  the  throat  and  have  you  down : after  they  are  gone 
there  is  no  desire  left  in  a man  to  drink  in  anything : he  is 
full!  ... 

“ Too  much  music ! You  are  slaying  each  other  and  it.  If 
you  choose  to  murder  each  other  that  is  your  affair:  I can’t 
help  it.  But  where  music  is  concerned, — ^hands  off!  I will 
not  suffer  you  to  debase  the  loveliness  of  the  world  by  heaping 
up  in  the  same  basket  things  holy  and  things  shameful,  by 
giving,  as  you  do  at  present,  the  prelude  to  Parsifal  between  a, 
fantasia  on  the  Daughter  of  the  Regiment  and  a saxophone 
quartette,  or  an  adagio  of  Beethoven  between  a cakewalk  and. 
the  rubbish  of  Leoncavallo.  You  boast  of  being  a musical, 
people.  You  pretend  to  love  music.  What  sort  of  music  do 
you  love?  Good  or  bad?  You  applaud  both  equally.  Well,|| 
then,  choose!  What  exactly  do  you  want?  You  do  not  know 
yourselves.  You  do  not  want  to  know : you  are  too  fearful 
of  taking  sides  and  compromising  yourselves.  ...  To  the  devil 
with  your  prudence !— You  are  above  party,  do  you  say?— ; 
Above?  You  mean  below.  ...”  , 

And  he  quoted  the  lines  of  old  Gottfried  Keller,  the  rud^ 
citizen  of  Zurich— one  of  the  German  writers  who  was  most- 
dear  to  him  by  reason  of  his  vigorous  loyalty  and  his  keen 
savor  of  the  soil : ; 

''  Wer  ilher  den  Partein  sich  w'dhnt  mit  stolzen  Mienen 
Der  steht  zumeist  vielmehr  betrdchtlich  unter  ihnenP 

{“  He  who  proudly  preens  himself  on  being  above  parties  is 
rather  immeasurably  beneath  them.”) 

"Have  courage  and  be  true,”  he  went  on.  "Have  courage 
and  be  ugly.  If  you  like  bad  music,  then  say  so  frankly.  Show 


REVOLT 


415 


yourselves,  see  yourselves  as  you  are.  Rid  your  souls  of  the 
loathsome  burden  of  all  your  compromise  and  equivocation. 
Wash  it  in  pure  water.  How  long  is  it  since  you  have  seen 
yourselves  in  a mirror?  I will  show  you  yourselves.  Composers, 
vivtuosi,  conductors,  singers,  and  you,  dear  public.  V ou  shall 
for  once  know  yourselves.  ...  Be  what  you  like:  but,  for  any 
sake,  be  true!  Be  true  even  though  art  and  artists — and  I 
myself— have  to  suffer  for  it!  If  art  and  truth  cannot  live 
together,  then  let  art  disappear.  Truth  is  life.  Lies  are  death. 

Naturally,  this  youthful,  wild  outburst,  which  was  all  of  a 
piece,  and  in  very  bad  taste,  produced  an  outcry.  And  yet,  as 
everybody  was  attacked  and  nobody  in  particular,  its  pertinency 
was  not  recognized.  Every  one  is,  or  believes  himself  to  be, 
or  says  that  he  is  the  best  friend  of  truth : there  was  therefore 
no  danger  of  the  conclusions  of  the  article  being  attacked.  Only 
people  were  shocked  by  its  general  tone : everybody  agreed  that 
it  was  hardly  proper,  especially  from  an  artist  in  a semi-official 
position.  A few  musicians  began  to  be  uneasy  and  protested 
bitterly : they  saw  that  Christophe  would  not  stop  at  that.  Others 
thought  themselves  more  clever  and  congratulated  Christophe 
on  his  courage : they  were  no  less  uneasy  about  his  next  articles. 

Both  tactics  produced  the  same  result.  Christophe  had 
plunged:  nothing  could  stop  him:  and  as  he  had  promised, 
everybody  was  passed  in  survey,  composers  and  interpreters  alike. 

The  first  victims  were  the  Kapellmeisters.  Christophe  did 
not  confine  himself  to  general  remarks  on  the  art  of  conducting 
an  orchestra.  He  mentioned  his  colleagues  of  his  own  town 
and  the  neighboring  towns  by  name : or  if  he  did  not  name 
them  his  allusions  were  so  transparent  that  nobody  could  be 
mistaken.  Everybody  recognized  the  apathetic  conductor  of  the 
Court,  Alois  von  Werner,  a cautious  old  man,  laden  with  honors, 
who  was  afraid  of  everything,  dodged  everything,  was  too  timid 
to  make  a remark  to  his  musicians  and  meekly  followed  what- 
ever they  chose  to  do, — who  never  risked  anything  on  his  pro- 
gramme that  had  not  been  consecrated  by  twenty  years  of  success, 
or,  at  least,  guaranteed  by  the  official  stamp  of  some  academic 
dignity.  Christophe  ironically  applauded  his  boldness:  he  con- 
gratulated him  on  having  discovered  Gade,  Dvorak,  or  Tschai- 
kowsky:  he  waxed  enthusiastic  over  his  unfailing  correctness. 


416 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


his  metronomic  eq’saiity,  the  always  fein-nuanciert  (finely 
shaded)  playing  of  his  orchestra:  he  proposed  to  orchestrate 
the  l^cole  de  la  Velocite  of  Czerny  for  his  next  concert,  and 
implored  him  not  to  try  himself  so  much,  not  to  give  rein  ta 
his  passions,  to  look  after  his  precious  health. — Or  he  cried  out 
indignantly  upon  the  way  in  which  he  had  conducted  the  Eroica 
of  Beethoven: 

A cannon ! A cannon ! Mow  me  down  these  people ! . . . 

But  have  you  then  no  idea  of  the  conflict,  the  fight  between 
human  stupidity  and  human  ferocity, — and  the  strength  which 
tramples  them  underfoot  with  a glad  shout  of  laughter? — How  | 

could  you  know  it?  It  is  you  against  whom  it  fights!  You 
expend  all  the  heroism  that  is  in  you  in  listening  or  in  playing 
the  Eroica  of  Beethoven  without  a yawn — (for  it  bores  you.  . . . 
Confess  that  it  bores  you  to  death!) — or  in  risking  a draught 
as  you  stand  with  bare  head  and  bowed  back  to  let  some  Serene 
Highness  pass.’^  ^ 

He  could  not  be  sarcastic  enough  about  the  pontiffs  of  the  ? 

Conservatories  who  interpreted  the  great  men  of  the  past  as  ’ 

classics.^^  t 

Classical ! That  word  expresses  everything.  Free  passion^  i 

arranged  and  expurgated  for  the  use  of  schools!  Life,  that  ; 

vast  plain  swept  by  the  winds, — inclosed  within  the  four  walls  ; 

of  a school  playground!  The  fierce,  proud  beat  of  a heart  in  , 

anguish,  reduced  to  the  tic-tacs  of  a four-tune  pendulum,  which  ; 

goes  its  jolly  way,  hobbling  and  imperturbably  leaning  on  the  ( 

crutch  of  time ! ...  To  enjoy  the  Ocean  you  need  to  put  it  j 

in  a bowl  with  goldfish.  You  only  understand  life  when  you  ) 

have  killed  it.^^  i 

If  he  was  not  kind  to  the  bird-stuffers,”  as  he  called  them,  { 

he  was  even  less  kind  to  the  ringmen  of  the  orchestra,  the 
illustrious  Kapellmeisters  who  toured  the  country  to  show  off 
their  flourishes  and  their  dainty  hands,  those  who  exercised  | 

their  virtuosity  at  the  expense  of  the  masters,  tried  hard  to  rj- 

make  the  most  familiar  works  unrecognizable,  and  turned  somer- 
saults through  the  hoop  of  the  Symphony  in  C minor.  He  1 
made  them  appear  as  old  coquettes,  prima  donnas  of  the  orches-  | 
tra,  gipsies,  and  rope-dancers.  | 

The  virtuosi  naturally  provided  him  with  splendid  material.  ! 


REVOLT 


4ir 

He  declared  himself  incompetent  when  he  had  to  criticise  their 
conjuring  performances.  He  said  that  such  mechanical  exercises 
belonged  to  the  School  of  Arts  and  Crafts,  and  that  not  musical 
criticism  but  charts  registering  the  duration,  and  number  of 
the  notes,  and  the  energy  expended,  could  decide  the  merit  of 
such  labors.  Sometimes  he  would  set  at  naught  some  famous 
piano  virtuoso  who  during  a two  hours’  concert  had  surmounted 
the  formidable  difficulties,  with  a smile  on  his  lips  and  his  hair 
hanging  down  into  his  eyes — of  executing  a childish  andante 
of  Mozart. — He  did  not  ignore  the  pleasure  of  overcoming  diffi- 
culties. He  had  tasted  it  himself:  it  was  one  of  the  joys  of 
life  to  him.  But  only  to  see  the  most  material  aspect  of  it, 
and  to  reduce  all  the  heroism  of  art  to  that,  seemed  to  him 
grotesque  and  degrading.  He  could  not  forgive  the  “ lions  ” or 
panthers  ” of  the  piano. — But  he  was  not  very  indulgent  either 
towards  the  town  pedants,  famous  in  Germany,  who,  while 
they  are  rightly  anxious  not  to  alter  the  text  of  the  masters, 
carefully  suppress  every  flight  of  thought,  and,  like  E.  d’ Albert 
and  H.  von  Biilow,  seem  to  be  giving  a lesson  in  diction  when 
they  are  rendering  a passionate  sonata. 

The  singers  had  their  turn.  Christophe  was  full  to  the  brim 
of  things  to  say  about  their  barbarous  heaviness  and  their  pro- 
vincial affectations.  It  was  not  only  because  of  his  recent  mis- 
adventures with  the  enraged  lady,  but  because  of  all  the  torture 
he  had  suffered  during  so  many  performances.  It  was  difficult 
to  know  which  had  suffered  most,  ears  or  eyes.  And  Christophe 
had  not  enough  standards  of  comparison  to  be  able  to  have 
any  idea  of  the  ugliness  of  the  setting,  the  hideous  costumes, 
the  screaming  colors.  He  was  only  shocked  by  the  vulgarity 
of  the  people,  their  gestures  and  attitudes,  their  unnatural 
playing,  the  inability  of  the  actors  to  take  on  other  souls  than 
their  own,  and  by  the  stupefying  indifference  with  which  they 
passed  from  one  role  to  another,  provided  they  were  written 
more  or  less  in  the  same  register.  Matrons  of  opulent  flesh, 
hearty  and  buxom,  appeared  alternately  as  Ysolde  and  Carmen. 
Amfortas  played  Figaro. — But  what  most  offended  Christophe 
was  the  ugliness  of  the  singing,  especially  in  the  classical  works 
in  which  the  beauty  of  melody  is  essential.  No  one  in  Germany 
could  sing  the  perfect  music  of  the  eighteenth  century:  no  one 


418 


JEAN-CHKISTOPHE 


would  take  the  trouble.  The  clear,  pure  style  of  Gluck  and 
Mozart  which,  like  that  of  Goethe,  seems  to  be  bathed  in  the 
light  of  Italy — the  style  which  begins  to  change  and  to  become 
vibrant  and  dazzling  with  Weber — the  style  ridiculed  by  the 
ponderous  caricatures  of  the  author  of  Crociato — had  been 
killed  by  the  triumph  of  Wagner.  The  wild  flight  of  the 
Valkyries  with  their  strident  cries  had  passed  over  the  Grecian 
sky.  The  heavy  clouds  of  Odin  dimmed  the  light.  No  one 
now  thought  of  singing  music : they  sang  poems.  Ugliness  and 
carelessness  of  detail,  even  false  notes  were  let  pass  under  pre- 
text that  only  the  whole,  only  the  thought  behind  it  mat- 
tered. ... 

Thought ! Let  us  talk  of  that.  As  if  you  understood  it ! 

. . . But  whether  or  no  you  do  understand  it,  I pray  you  respect 
the  form  that  thought  has  chosen  for  itself.  Above  all,  let 
music  be  and  remain  music ! 

And  the  great  concern  of  German  artists  with  expression 
and  profundity  of  thought  was,  according  to  Christophe,  a 
good  joke.  Expression?  Thought?  Yes,  they  introduced  them 
into  everything — everything  impartially.  They  would  have  ^ 
found  thought  in  a skein  of  wool  just  as  much — neither  more  i 
nor  less — as  in  a statue  of  Michael  Angelo.  They  played  any- 
thing, anybody’s  music  with  exactly  the  same  energy.  For 
most  of  them  the  great  thing  in  music — so  he  declared — ^was 
the  volume  of  sound,  just  a musical  noise.  The  pleasure  of 
singing  so  potent  in  Germany  was  in  some  sort  a pleasure  of  j 
vocal  gymnastics.  It  was  just  a matter  of  being  inflated  with  | 
air  and  then  letting  it  go  vigorously,  powerfully,  for  a long  " 
time  together  and  rhythmically. — And  by  way  of  compliment  \ 
he  accorded  a certain  great  singer  a certificate  of  good  health,  i 
He  was  not  content  with  flaying  the  artists.  He  strode  over 
the  footlights  and  trounced  the  public  for  coming,  gaping^ 
to  such  performances.  The  public  was  staggered  and  did  not 
know  whether  it  ought  to  laugh  or  be  angry.  They  had  every 
right  to  cry  out  upon  his  injustice:  they  had  taken  care  not 
to  be  mixed  up  in  any  artistic  conflict:  they  stood  aside  pru- 
dently from  any  burning  question:  and  to  avoid  making  any 
mistake  they  applauded  everything!  And  now  Christophe  de- 
clared that  it  was  a crime  to  applaud!  ...  To  applaud  bad 


EEVOLT 


419 


works?— That  would  have  been  enough!  But  Christophe  went 
further:  he  stormed  at  them  for  applauding  great  works: 

“ Humbugs ! ” he  said.  “ You  would  have  us  believe  that 
you  have  as  much  enthusiasm  as  that  ? . . . Oh  I Come ! Spare 
yourselves  the  trouble!  You  only  prove  exactly  the  opposite 
of  what  you  are  trying  to  prove.  Applaud  if  you  like  those 
works  and  passages  which  in  some  measure  deserve  applause. 
Applaud  those  loud  final  movements  which  are  written,  as 
Mozart  said,  “ for  long  ears.”  Applaud  as  much  as  you  like, 
then : your  braying  is  anticipated : it  is  part  of  the  concert. 
But  after  the  Missa  Solemnis  of  Beethoven!  ...  Poor 
wretches!  ...  It  is  the  Last  Judgment.  You  have  just  seen 
the  maddening  Gloria  pass  like  a storm  over  the  ocean.  You 
have  seen  the  waterspout  of  an  athletic  and  tremendous  well, 
which  stops,  breaks,  reaches  up  to  the  clouds  clinging  by  its 
two  hands  above  the  abyss,  then  plunging  once  more  into  space 
in  full  swing.  The  squall  shrieks  and  whirls  along.  And 
when  the  hurricane  is  at  its  height  there  is  a sudden  modula- 
tion, a radiance  of  sound  which  cleaves  the  darkness  of  the 
sky  and  falls  upon  the  livid  sea  like  a patch  of  light.  It  is 
the  end:  the  furious  flight  of  the  destroying  angel  stops  short, 
its  wings  transfixed  by  these  flashes  of  lightning.  Around 
you  all  is  buzzing  and  quivering.  The  eye  gazes  flxedly  forward 
in  stupor.  The  heart  beats,  breathing  stops,  the  limbs  are 
paralyzed.  . . . And  hardly  has  the  last  note  sounded  than 
already  you  are  gay  and  merry.  You  shout,  you  laugh,  you 
criticise,  you  applaud.  . . . But  you  have  seen  nothing,  heard 
nothing,  felt  nothing,  understood  nothing,  nothing,  nothing, 
absolutely  nothing!  The  sufferings  of  an  artist  are  a show  to 
you.  You  think  the  tears  of  agony  of  a Beethoven  are  flnely 
painted.  You  would  cry.  ‘Encore  ’ to  the  Crucifixion.  A 
great  soul  struggles  all  its  life  long  in  sorrow  to  divert  your 
idleness  for  an  hour!  . . .” 

So,  without  knowing  it,  he  confirmed  Goethels  great  words : 
but  he  had  not  yet  attained  his  lofty  serenity: 

“The  people  make  a sport  of  the  sublime.  If  they  could 
see  it  as  it  is,  they  would  be  unable  to  bear  its  aspect.” 

If  he  had  only  stopped  at  that! — But,  whirled  along  by  his 
-luthusiasm,  he  swept  past  the  public  and  plunged  like  a cannon 


420 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


ball  into  the  sanctuary,  the  tabernacle,  the  inviolable  refuge  of 
mediocrity:  Criticism.  He  bombarded  his  colleagues.  One  of 
them  had  taken  upon  himself  to  attack  the  most  gifted  of 
living  composers,  the  most  advanced  representative  of  the  new 
school,  Hassler,  the  writer  of  programme  symphonies,  extrava- 
gant in  truth,  but  full  of  genius.  Christophe  who — as  perhaps 
will  be  remembered — had  been  presented  to  him  when  he  was  a 
child,  had  always  had  a secret  tenderness  for  him  in  his  grati- 
tude for  the  enthusiasm  and  emotion  that  he  had  had  then. 

To  see  a stupid  critic,  whose  ignorance  he  knew,  instructing 
a man  of  that  caliber,  calling  him  to  order,  and  reminding 
him  of  set  principles,  infuriated  him : 

“ Order ! Order ! ” he  cried.  “ You  do  not  know  any  order 
but  that  of  the  police.  Genius  is  not  to  be  dragged  along  the 
beaten  track.  It  creates  order,  and  makes  its  will  a law.” 

'After  this  arrogant  declaration  he  took  the  unlucky  critic,  ' 
considered  all  the  idiocies  he  had  written  for  some  time  past,  s 
and  administered  correction.  : 

All  the  critics  felt  the  affront.  Up  to  that  time  they  had  ! 
stood  aside  from  the  conflict.  They  did  not  care  to  risk  a . 
rebuff:  they  knew  Christophe,  they  knew  his  efficiency,  and  j 
they  knew  also  that  he  was  not  long-suffering.  Certain  of  them  i 
had  discreetly  expressed  their  regret  that  so  gifted  a composer  : 
should  dabble  in  a profession  not  his  own.  Whatever  might  . 
be  their  opinion  (when  they  had  one),  and  however  hurt  they  ; 
might  be  by  Christophe,  they  respected  in  him  their  own  privi-  | 
lege  of  being  able  to  criticise  everything  without  being  criticised  | 
themselves.  But  when  they  saw  Christophe  rudely  break  the 
tacit  convention  which  bound  them,  they  saw  in  him  an  enemy  ( 
of  public  order.  With  one  consent  it  seemed  revolting  to  them  i 
that  a very  young  man  should  take  upon  himself  to  show  scant 
respect  for  the  national  glories : and  they  began  a furious  cam- 
paign against  him.  They  did  not  write  long  articles  or  con- 
secutive arguments — (they  were  unwilling  to  venture  upon  such 
ground  with  an  adversary  better  armed  than  themselves:  al- 
though a journalist  has  the  special  faculty  of  being  able  to 
discuss  without  taking  his  adversary’s  arguments  into  con- 
sideration, and  even  without  having  read  them) — ^but  long  ex- 
perience had  taught  them,  that,  as  the  reader  of  a paper  always 


EEVOLT 


431 


agrees  with  it,  even  to  appear  to  argue  was  to  weaken  its  credit 
with  him:  it  was  necessary  to  afiBrm,  or  better  still,  to  deny — 
(negation  is  twice  as  powerful  as  affirmation:  it  is  a direct 
consequence  of  the  law  of  gravity:  it  is  much  easier  to  drop 
a stone  than  to  throw  it  up). — They  adopted,  therefore,  a sys- 
tem of  little  notes,  perfidious,  ironic,  injurious,  which  were  re- 
peated day  by  day,  in  an  easily  accessible  position,  with  un- 
wearying assiduity.  They  held  the  insolent  Christophe  up  to 
ridicule,  though  they  never  mentioned  him  by  name,  but  always 
transparently  alluded  to  him.  They  twisted  his  words  to  make 
them  look  absurd:  they  told  anecdotes  about  him,  true  for 
the  most  part,  though  the  rest  were  a tissue  of  lies,  nicely 
calculated  to  set  him  at  loggerheads  with  the  whole  town,  and, 
worse  still,  with  the  Court  : even  his  physical  appearance,  his 
features,  his  manner  of  dressing,  were  attacked  and  caricatured 
in  a way  that  by  dint  of  repetition  came  to  be  like  him. 

It  would  have  mattered  little  to  Christophe’s  friends  if  their 
Eeview  had  not  also  come  in  for  blows  in  the  battle.  In  truth, 
it  served  rather  as  an  advertisement:  there  was  no  desire  to 
commit  the  Eeview  to  the  quarrel : rather  the  attempt  was  made 
to  cut  Christophe  off  from  it:  there  was  astonishment  that 
it  should  so  compromise  its  good  name,  and  they  were  given 
to  understand  that  if  they  did  not  take  care  steps  would  be 
taken,  however  unpleasant  it  might  be,  to  make  the  whole 
editorial  staff  responsible.  There  were  signs  of  attack,  gentle 
enough,  upon  Adolf  Mai  and  Mannheim,  which  stirred  up  the 
wasps’  nest.  Mannheim  only  laughed  at  it:  he  tlmught  that 
it  would  infuriate  his  father,  his  uncles,  cousins,  Imd  his  in- 
numerable family,  who  took  upon  themselves  to  watch  every- 
thing he  did  and  to  be  scandalized  by  it.  But  Adolf  Mai  took 
it  very  seriously  and  blamed  Christophe  for  compromising  the 
Eeview.  Christophe  sent  him  packing.  The  others  who  had 
not  been  attacked  found  it  rather  amusing  that  Mai,  who  was 
apt  to  pontificate  over  them,  should  be  their  scapegoat.  Wald- 
haus  was  secretly  delighted:  he  said  that  there  was  never  a 
fight  without  a few  heads  being  broken.  Naturally  he  took 
good  care  that  it  should  not  be  his  own : he  thought  he  was 
sheltered  from  onslaught  by  the  position  of  his  family  and  his 


422 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


relatives:  and  he  saw  no  harm  in  the  Jews,  his  allies,  being 
mauled  a little.  Ehrenfeld  and  Goldenring,  who  were  so  far 
untouched,  would  not  have  been  worried  by  attack:  they  could 
reply.  But  what  did  touch  them  on  the  raw  was  that  Chris- 
tophe  should  go  on  persistently  putting  them  in  the  wrong 
with  their  friends,  and  especially  their  women  friends.  They 
had  laughed  loudly  at  the  first  articles  and  thought  them  good 
fun:  they  admired  Christophers  vigorous  window-smashing: 
they  thought  they  had  only  to  give  the  word  to  check  his  com-  | 
bativeness,  or  at  least  to  turn  his  attack  from  men  and  women 
whom  they  might  mention. — But  no.  Christophe  would  listen 
to  nothing:  he  paid  no  heed  to  any  remark  and  went  on  like 
a madman.  If  they  let  him  go  on  there  would  be  no  living 
in  the  place.  Already  their  young  women  friends,  furious  and 
in  tears,  had  come  and  made  scenes  at  the  offices  of  the  Eeview. 
They  brought  all  their  diplomacy  to  bear  on  Christophe  to  per- 
suade him  at  least  to  moderate  certain  of  his  criticisms : Chris- 
tophe changed  nothing.  They  lost  their  tempers:  Christophe  ; 

lost  his,  but  he  changed  nothing.  Waldhaus  was  amused  by  * 

the  unhappiness  of  his  friends,  which  in  no  wise  touched  him, 
and  took  Christophers  part  to  annoy  them.  Perhaps  also  he 
was  more  capable  than  they  of  appreciating  Christophe’s  ex- 
travagance, who  with  head  down  hurled  himself  upon  every- 
thing without  keeping  any  line  of  retreat,  or  preparing  any 
refuge  for  the  future.  As  for  Mannheim  he  was  royally  amused 
by  the  farce:  it  seemed  to  him  a good  joke  to  have  introduced 
this  madman  among  these  correct  people,  and  he  rocked  with 
laughter  both  at  the  blows  which  Christophe  dealt  and  at  those 
which  he  received.  Although  under  his  sister^s  influence  he 
was  beginning  to  think  that  Christophe  was  decidedly  a little 
cracked,  he  only  liked  him  the  more  for  it — (it  was  necessary 
for  him  to  find  those  who  were  in  sympathy  with  him  a little 
absurd). — And  so  he  joined  Waldhaus  in  supporting  Chris- 
tophe against  the  others. 

As  he  was  not  wanting  in  practical  sense,  in  spite  of  all  his 
efforts  to  pretend  to  the  contrary,  he  thought  very  justly  that 
it  would  be  to  his  friend^s  advantage  to  ally  himself  with  the 
cause  of  the  most  advanced  musical  party  in  the  country. 

As  in  most  German  towns,  there  was  in  the  town  a Wagner* 


I 


EEVOLT 


433 


Verein,  whicH  represented  new  ideas  against  the  conservative 
element. — In  truth,  there  was  no  great  risk  in  defending  Wagner 
when  his  fame  was  acknowledged  everywhere  and  his  works 
included  in  the  repertory  of  every  Opera  House  in  Germany. 
And  yet  his  victory  was  rather  won  by  force  than  by  universal 
accord,  and  at  heart  the  majority  were  obstinately  conservative, 
especially  in  the  small  towns  such  as  this  which  have  been 
rather  left  outside  the  great  modern  movements  and  are  rather 
proud  of  their  ancient  fame.  More  than  anywhere  else  there 
reigned  the  distrust,  so  innate  in  the  German  people,  of  any- 
thing new,  the  sort  of  laziness  in  feeling  anything  true  or 
powerful  which  has  not  been  pondered  and  digested  by  several 
generations.  It  was  apparent  in  the  reluctance  with  which — 
if  not  the  works  of  Wagner  which  are  beyond  discussion — 
every  new  work  inspired  by  the  Wagnerian  spirit  was  accepted. 
And  so  the  Wagner-V ereine  would  have  had  a useful  task  to 
fulfil  if  they  had  set  themselves  to  defend  all  the  young  and 
original  forces  in  art.  Sometimes  they  did  so,  and  Bruckner 
or  Hugo  Wolf  found  in  some  of  them  their  best  allies.  But 
too  often  the  egoism  of  the  master  weighed  upon  his  disciples: 
and  just  as  Bayreuth  serves  only  monstrously  to  glorify  one 
man,  the  offshoots  of  Bayreuth  were  little  churches  in  which 
Mass  was  eternally  sung  in  honor  of  the  one  God.  At  the 
most  the  faithful  disciples  were  admitted  to  the  side  chapels, 
the  disciples  who  applied  the  hallowed  doctrines  to  the  letter, 
and,  prostrate  in  the  dust,  adored  the  only  Divinity  with  His 
many  faces:  music,  poetry,  drama,  and  metaphysics. 

The  Wagner-V erein  of  the  town  was  in  exactly  this  case. — 
However,  they  went  through  the  form  of  activity:  they  were 
always  trying  to  enroll  young  men  of  talent  who  looked  as 
though  they  might  be  useful  to  it:  and  they  had  long  had  their 
eyes  on  Christophe.  They  had  discreetly  made  advances  to 
him,  of  which  Christophe  had  not  taken  any  notice,  because 
he  felt  no  need  of  being  associated  with  anybody:  he  could  not 
understand  the  necessity  which  drove  his  compatriots  always 
to  be  banding  themselves  together  in  groups,  being  unable  to 
do  anything  alone:  neither  to  sing,  nor  to  walk,  nor  to  drink. 
He  was  averse  to  all  Vereinswesen.  But  on  the  whole  he  was 
more  kindly  disposed  to  the  Wag-ner-V erein  than  to  any  other 


424 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


Verein:  at  least  they  did  provide  an  excuse  for  fine  concerts: 
and  although  he  did  not  share  all  the  Wagnerian  ideas  on  art, 
he  was  much  nearer  them  than  to  those  of  any  other  group 
in  music.  He  could  he  thought  find  common  ground  with  a 
party  which  was  as  unjust  as  himself  towards  Brahms  and  I 
the  Brahmins.”  So  he  let  himself  be  put  up  for  it.  Mann- 
heim introduced  him:  he  knew  everybody.  Without  being  a 
musician  he  was  a member  of  the  Wagner-^Verein, — The  manag- 
ing committee  had  followed  the  campaign  which  Christophe 
was  conducting  in  the  Eeview.  His  slaughter  in  the  opposing 
camp  had  seemed  to  them  to  give  signs  of  a strong  grip  which 
it  would  be  as  well  to  have  in  their  service.  Christophe  had 
also  let  fly  certain  disrespectful  remarks  about  the  sacred  fetish : 
but  they  had  preferred  to  close  their  eyes  to  that:  and  perhaps 
his  attacks,  not  yet  very  offensive,  had  not  been  without  their 
influence,  unconsciously,  in  making  them  so  eager  to  enroll 
Christophe  before  he  had  time  to  deliver  himself  manfully.  - 
They  came  and  very  amiably  asked  his  permission  to  play  some  j 
of  his  compositions  at  one  of  the  approaching  concerts  of  the  > 
Association.  Christophe  was  flattered,  and  accepted:  he  went  , 
to  the  Wagner-Verein,  and,  urged  by  Mannheim,  he  was  made  i 
a member,  ? 

At  that  time  there  were  at  the  head  of  the  Wagner-Vereiri  i 
two  men,  of  whom  one  enjoyed  a certain  notoriety  as  a writer,  ^ 
and  the  other  as  a conductor.  Both  had  a Mohammedan  belief  ; 
in  Wagner.  The  first,  Josias  Kling,  had  compiled  a Wagner  ^ 
Dictionary — Wagner  Lexikon — ^which  made  it  possible  in  a | 
moment  to  know  the  master’s  thoughts  de  omni  re  scibili:  ) 
it  had  been  his  life’s  work.  He  was  capable  of  reciting  whole  { 
chapters  of  it  at  table,  as  the  French  provincials  used  to  troll  i 
the  songs  of  the  Maid.  He  used  also  to  publish  in  the  Bay- 
reuther  Blatter  articles  on  Wagner  and  the  Aryan  Spirit.  Of 
course,  Wagner  was  to  him  the  type  of  the  pure  Aryan,  of  whom 
the  German  race  had  remained  the  last  inviolable  refuge  against 
the  corrupting  influences  of  Latin  Semitism,  especially  the 
French.  He  declared  that  the  impure  French  spirit  was  finally 
destroyed,  though  he  did  not  desist  from  attacking  it  bitterly 
day  by  day  as  though  the  eternal  enemy  were  still  a menace. 
He  would  only  acknowledge  one  great  man  in  France : the ; 


KEVOLT 


425 


Count  of  Gobineau.  Kling  was  a little  man,  very  little,  and 
he  used  to  blush  like  a girl. — The  other  pillar  of  the  Wagner- 
Verein,  Erich  Lauber,  had  been  manager  of  a chemical  works 
until  four  years  before:  then  he  had  given  up  everything  to 
become  a conductor.  He  had  succeeded  by  force  of  will,  and 
because  he  was  very  rich.  He  was  a Bayreuth  fanatic:  it  was 
said  that  he  had  gone  there  on  foot,  from  Munich,  wearing 
pilgrim’s  sandals.  It  was  a strange  thing  that  a man  who 
had  read  much,  traveled  much,  practised  divers  professions,  and 
in  everything  displayed  an  energetic  personality,  should  have 
become  in  music  a sheep  of  Panurge:  all  his  originality  was 
expended  in  his  being  a little  more  stupid  than  the  others. 
He  was  not  sure  enough  of  himself  in  music  to  trust  to  his  own 
personal  feelings,  and  so  he  slavishly  followed  the  interpreta- 
tions of  Wagner  given  by  the  Kapellmeisters,  and  the  licensees, 
of  Bayreuth.  He  desired  to  reproduce  even  to  the  smallest 
detail  the  setting  and  the  variegated  costnmes  which  delighted 
the  puerile  and  barbarous  taste  of  the  little  Court  of  Wahn- 
fried.  He  was  like  the  fanatical  admirer  of  Michael  Angelo 
who  used  to  reproduce  in  his  copies  even  the  cracks  in  the 
wall  of  the  moldy  patches  which  had  themselves  been  hallowed 
by  their  appearance  in  the  hallowed  pictures. 

Christophe  was  not  likely  to  approve  greatly  of  the  two  men. 
But  they  were  men  of  the  world,  pleasant,  and  both  well-read: 
and  Lauber’s  conversation  was  always  interesting  on  any  other 
subject  than  music.  He  was  a bit  of  a crank : and  Christophe 
did  not  dislike  cranks:  they  were  a change  from  the  horrible 
banality  of  reasonable  people.  He  did  not  yet  know  that  there 
is  nothing  more  devastating  than  an  irrational  man,  and  that 
originality  is  even  more  rare  among  those  who  are  called 
“originals”  than  among  the  rest.  For  these  “originals” 
are  simply  maniacs  whose  thoughts  are  reduced  to  clock- 
work. 

Josias  Kling  and  Lauber,  being  desirous  of  winning  Chris- 
tophe’s  support,  were  at  first  very  keenly  interested  in  him. 
Kling  wrote  a eulogistic  article  about  him  and  Lauber  followed 
all  his  directions  when  he  conducted  his  compositions  at  one 
of  the  concerts  of  the  Society.  Christophe  was  touched  by  it 
all.  Unfortunately  all  their  attentions  were  spoiled  by  the 


426 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


stupidity  of  those  who  paid  them.  He  had  not  the  faculty  of 
pretending  about  people  because  they  admired  him.  He  was 
exacting.  He  demanded  that  no  one  should  admire  him  for 
the  opposite  of  what  he  was:  and  he  was  always  prone  to  regard 
as  enemies  those  who  were  his  friends,  by  mistake.  And  so 
he  was  not  at  all  pleased  with  Kling  for  seeing  in  him  a disciple 
of  Wagner,  and  trying  to  see  connections  between  passages  of 
his  Lieder  and  passages  of  the  Tetralogy,  which  had  nothing  in 
common  but  certain  notes  of  the  scale.  And  he  had  no  pleasure 
in  hearing  one  of  his  works  sandwiched — ^together  with  a worth- 
less imitation  by  a Wagnerian  student — ^between  two  enormous 
blocks  of  Wagnerian  drama. 

It  was  not  long  before  he  was  stifled  in  the  little  chapel. 
It  was  just  another  Conservatoire,  as  narrow  as  the  old  Con-  ; 
^servatoires,  and  more  intolerant  because  it  was  the  latest  comer 
in  art.  Christophe  began  to  lose  his  illusions  about  the  absolute  ’ 
value  of  a form  of  art  or  of  thought.  Hitherto  he  had  always  ^ 
believed  that  great  ideas  bear  their  own  light  within  them-  < 
selves.  Now  he  saw  that  ideas  may  change,  but  that  men  5 
remain  the  same : and,  in  fine,  nothing  counted  but  men : ideas  ^ 
were  what  they  were.  If  they  were  born  mediocre  and  servile,  \ 
even  genius  became  mediocre  in  its  passage  through  their  souls,  ^ 
and  the  shout  of  freedom  of  the  hero  breaking  his  bonds  became  . 
the  act  of  slavery  of  succeeding  generations. — Christophe  could 
not  refrain  from  expressing  his  feelings.  He  let  no  opportunity  ; 
slip  of  jeering  at  fetishism  in  art.  He  declared  that  there  was  ^ 
no  need  of  idols,  or  classics  of  any  sort,  and  that  he  only  had  | 
the  right  to  call  himself  the  heir  of  the  spirit  of  Wagner  who  ' 
was  capable  of  trampling  Wagner  underfoot  and  so  walking  | 
on  and  keeping  himself  in  close  communion  with  life.  Kling’s  1 
stupidity  made  Christophe  aggressive.  He  set  out  all  the  faults 
and  absurdities  he  could  see  in  Wagner.  The  Wagnerians  at 
once  credited  him  with  a grotesque  jealousy  of  their  God. 
Christophe  for  his  part  had  no  doubt  that  these  same  people, 
who  exalted  Wagner  since  he  was  dead  would  have  been  the 
first  to  strangle  him  in  his  life : and  he  did  them  an  injustice. 
The  Klings  and  the  Laubers  also  had  had  their  hour  of  illumina- 
tion: they  had  been  advanced  twenty  years  ago:  and  then  like 
most  people  they  had  stopped  short  at  that.  Man  has  so  little 


EEVOLT 


427' 


force  that  he  is  out  of  breath  after  the  first  ascent:  very  few 
are  long-winded  enough  to  go  on. 

Christophers  attitude  quickly  alienated  him  from  his  new 
friends.  Their  sympathy  was  a bargain:  he  had  to  side  with 
them  if  they  were  to  side  with  him:  and  it  was  quite  evident 
that  Christophe  would  not  yield  an  inch:  he  would  not  join 
them.  They  lost  their  enthusiasm  for  him.  The  eulogies 
which  he  refused  to  accord  to  the  gods  and  demi-gods  who  were 
approved  by  the  cult,  were  withheld  from  him.  They  showed 
less  eagerness  to  welcome  his  compositions:  and  some  of  the 
members  began  to  protest  against  his  name  being  too  often  on 
the  programmes.  They  laughed  at  him  behind  his  back,  and 
criticism  went  on:  Kling  and  Lauber  by  not  protesting  seemed 
to  take  part  in  it.  They  would  have  avoided  a breach  with 
Christophe  if  possible : first  because  the  minds  of  the  Germans  of 
the  Ehine  like  mixed  solutions,  solutions  which  are  not  solu- 
tions, and  have  the  privilege  of  prolonging  indefinitely  an 
ambiguous  situation : and  secondly,  because  they  hoped  in  spite 
of  everything  to  be  able  to  make  use  of  him,  by  wearing  him 
down,  if  not  by  persuasion. 

Christophe  gave  them  no  time  for  it.  Whenever  he  thought 
he  felt  that  at  heart  any  man  disliked  him,  but  would  not  admit 
it  and  tried  to  cover  it  up  so  as  to  remain  on  good  terms  with 
him,  he  would  never  rest  until  he  had  succeeded  in  proving 
to  him  that  he  was  his  enemy.  One  evening  at  the  Wagner- 
Verein  when  he  had  come  up  against  a wall  of  hypocritical 
hostility,  he  could  bear  it  no  longer  and  sent  in  his  resignation 
I to  Lauber  without  wasting  words.  Lauber  could  not  under- 
I stand  it : and  Mannheim  hastened  to  Christophe  to  try  and 
pacify  him.  At  his  first  words  Christophe  burst  out: 

No,  no,  no, — no ! DonT  talk  to  me  about  these  people. 
I will  not  see  them  again.  ...  I cannot.  I cannot.  ...  I am 
j disgusted,  horribly,  with  men:  I can  hardly  bear  to  look  at 
I one.” 

Mannheim  laughed  heartily.  He  was  thinking  much  less* 
[of  smoothing  Christophe  down  than  of  having  the  fun  of  it. 
i know  that  they  are  not  beautiful,”  he  said;  ^^but  that  is. 
nothing  new : what  new  thing  has  happened  ? ” 

Nothing.  I have  had  enough,  that  is  all.  ...  Yes,  laugh,, 


428 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


laugh  at  me:  everybody  knows  I am  mad.  Prudent  people 
actdn  accordance  with  the  laws  of  logic  and  reason  and  sanity. 

I am  not  like  that:  I am  a man  who  acts  only  on  his  own 
impulse.  When  a certain  quantity  of  electricity  is  accumulated 
in  me  it  has  to  expend  itself,  at  all  costs:  and  so  much  the 
worse  for  the  others  if  it  touches  them!  And  so  much  the 
worse  for  them ! I am  not  made  for  living  in  society.  Hence- 
forth I shall  belong  only  to  myself.” 

“ You  think  you  can  do  without  everybody  else?  ” said  Mann- 
heim. “You  cannot  play  your  music  all  by  yourself.  You 
need  singers,  an  orchestra,  a conductor,  an  audience,  a 
claque.  . . .” 

Christophe  shouted. 

“ No ! no ! no ! ” 

But  the  last  word  made  him  jump. 

“A  claque!  Are  you  not  ashamed?” 

“ I am  not  talking  of  a paid  claque— (although,  indeed,  it  is* 
the  only  means  yet  discovered  of  revealing  the  merit  of  a com-; 
position  to  the  audience).— But  you  must  have  a claque:  the' 
author’s  coterie  is  a claque,  properly  drilled  by  him:  every, 
author  has  his  claque : that  is  what  friends  are  for.”  | 

“ I don’t  want  any  friends ! ” 

“ Then  you  will  be  hissed.” 

“ I want  to  be  hissed ! ” 

Mannheim  was  in.  the  seventh  heaven. 

“You  won’t  have  even  that  pleasure  for  long.  They  won’t 
play  you.” 

“ So  be  it,  then ! Do  you  think  I care  about  being  a famous 

man?  . . . Yes.  I was  making  for  that  with  all  my  might.  . . 
Nonsense ! Polly ! Idiocy ! . . . As  if  the  satisfaction  of  the 
vulgarest  sort  of  pride  could  compensate  for  all  the  sacrifices— 
weariness,  suffering,  infamy,  insults,  degradation,  ignoble  con- 
cessions— which  are  the  price  of  fame ! Devil  take  me  if  I ever 
bother  my  head  about  such  things  again ! Never  again ! Pub.^ 
licity  is  a vulgar  infamy.  I will  be  a private  citizen  and  live 
for  m3fself  and  those  whom  I love.  . . .” 

“ Good,”  said  Mannheim  ironically.  “ You  must  choose  a 
profession.  Why  shouldn’t  you  make  shoes  ? ” 

“Ah!  if  I were  a cobbler  like  the  incomparable  Sachs!” 


KEVOLT 


429 


cried  Christophe.  How  happy  my  life  would  be ! A cobbler 
all  through  the  week^ — and  a musician  on  Sunday,  privately, 
intimately,  for  my  own  pleasure  and  that  of  my  friends ! What 
a life  that  would  be!  . . . Am  I mad,  to  waste  my  time  and 
trouble  for  the  magnificent  pleasure  of  ^ being  a prey  to  the 
judgment  of  idiots?  Is  it  not  much  better  and  finer  to  be 
loved  and  understood  by  a few  honest  men  than  to  be  heard, 
criticised,  and  toadied  by  thousands  of  fools?  . . . The  devil 
of  pride  and  thirst  for  fame  shall  never  again  take  me:  trust 
me  for  that ! 

Certainly,”  said  Mannheim.  He  thought : 

^^In  an  hour  he  will  say  just  the  opposite.”  He  remarked 
quietly : 

Then  I am  to  go  and  smooth  things  down  with  the  Waqner^ 
Verein?’’ 

Christophe  waved  his  arms. 

What  is  the  good  of  my  shouting  myself  hoarse  with  telling 
you  ^ No,^  for  the  last  hour?  ...  I tell  you  that  I will  never 
set  foot  inside  it  again!  I loathe  all  these  Wagner-Vereine, 
all  these  Vereine,  all  these  flocks  of  sheep  who  have  to  huddle 
together  to  be  able  to  baa  in  unison.  Go  and  tell  those  sheep 
from  me  that  I am  a wolf,  that  I have  teeth,  and  am  not  made 
for  the  pasture ! ” 

^^  Good,  good.  I will  tell  them,”  said  Mannheim,  as  he 
went.  He  was  delighted  with  his  morning^s  entertainment. 
He  thought: 

He  is  mad,  mad,  mad  as  a hatter.  . . .” 

His  sister,  to  whom  he  reported  the  interview,  at  once 
shrugged  her  shoulders  and  said: 

^^Mad?  He  would  like  us  to  think  so!  ...  He  is  stupid,, 
and  absurdly  vain.  ...” 

Christophe  went  on  with  his  fierce  campaign  in  Waldhaus’s 
Review.  It  was  not  that  it  gave  him  pleasure:  criticism  dis- 
gusted him,  and  he  was  always  wishing  it  at  the  bottom  of  the 
sea.  But  he  stuck  to  it  because  people  were  trying  to  stop  him : 
he  did  not  wish  to  appear  to  have  given  in. 

Waldhaus  was  beginning  to  be  uneasy.  As  long  as  he  was 
out  of  reach  he  had  looked  on  at  the  affray  with  the  calmness. 


430 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


of  an  Olympian  god.  But  for  some  weeks  past  the  other  papers 
had  seemed  to  be  beginning  to  disregard  his  inviolability:  they  i 
had  begun  to  attack  his  vanity  as  a writer  with  a rare  malev- 
olence in  which,  had  Waldhaus  been  more  subtle,  he  might  have  ^ 
recognized  the  hand  of  a friend.  As  a matter  of  fact,  the 
attacks'  were  cunningly  instigated  by  Ehrenfeld  and  Golden- 
ring:  they  could  see  no  other  way  of  inducing  him  to  stop 
Christophe’s  polemics.  Their  perception  was  justified.  Wald- 
haus at  once  declared  that  Christophe  was  beginning  to  weary 
him : and  he  withdrew  his  support.  All  the  staff  of  the  Keview 
then  tried  hard  to  silence  Christophe!  But  it  were  as  easy  to 
muzzle  a dog  who  is  about  to  devour  his  prey ! Everything  they 
said  to  him  only  excited  him  more.  He  called  them  poltroons 
and  declared  that  he  would  say  everything— everything  that  he 
ought  to  say.  If  they  wished  to  get  rid  of  him,  they  were  free 
to  do  so!  The  whole  town  would  know  that  they  were  as' 
cowardly  as  the  rest : but  he  would  not  go  of  his  own  accord.  ■ 
They  looked  at  each  other  in  consternation,  bitterly  blaming; 
Mannheim  for  the  trick  he  had  played  them  in  bringing  such' 
a madman  among  them.  Mannheim  laughed  and  tried  hard, 
to  curb  Christophe  himself : and  he  vowed  that  with  the  next; 
article  Christophe  would  water  his  wine.  They  were  incredu- 
lous: but  the  event  proved  that  Mannheim  had  not  boasted; 
Tainly.  Christophe’s  next  article,  though  not  a model  of  cour- 
tesy, did  not  contain  a single  offensive  remark  about  anybody.: 
Mannheim’s  method  was  very  simple:  they  were  all  amazed- 
at  not  having  thought  of  it  before : Christophe  never  read  whatj 
he  wrote  in  the  Review,  and  he  hardly  read  the  proofs  of  his! 
articles,  only  very  quickly  and  carelessly.  Adolf  Mai  had  mor& 
than  once  passed  caustic  remarks  on  the  subject:  he  said  that 
:a  ptinter’s  error  was  a disgrace  to  a Review : and  Christophe, 
who  did  not  regard  criticism  altogether  as  an  art,  replied  that 
those  who  were  upbraided  in  it  would  understand  well  enough. 
Mannheim  turned  this  to  account : he  said  that  Christophe  was 
right  and  that  correcting  proofs  was  printers’  work:  and  he 
offered  to  take  it  over.  Christophe  Avas  overwhelmed  with 
gratitude:  but  they  told  him  that  such  an  arrangement  would 
be  of  service  to  them  and  a saving  of  time  for  the  Review.  So 
Christophe  left  his  proofs  to  Mannheim  and  asked  him  to 


i 


KEVOLT 


431 


correct  them  carefully.  Mannheim  did:  it  was  sport  for  him. 
At  first  he  only  ventured  to  tone  down  certain  phrases  and  to 
delete  here  and  there  certain  ungracious  epithets.  Emboldened 
by  success,  he  went  further  with  his  experiments:  he  began 
to  alter  sentences  and  their  meaning : and  he  was  really  skilful 
in  it.  The  whole  art  of  it  consisted  in  preserving  the  general 
appearance  of  the  sentence  and  its  characteristic  form  while 
making  it  say  exactly  the  opposite  of  what  Christophe  had 
meant.  Mannheim  took  far  more  trouble  to  disfigure  Chris- 
tophers articles  than  he  would  have  done  to  write  them  himself : 
never  had  he  worked  so  hard.  But  he  enjoyed  the  result: 
certain  musicians  whom  Christophe  had  hitherto  pursued  with 
his  sarcasms  were  astounded  to  see  him  grow  gradually  gentle 
and  at  last  sing  their  praises.  The  staff  of  the  Eeview  were 
delighted.  Mannheim  used  to  read  aloud  his  lucubrations  to 
them.  They  roared  with  laughter.  Ehrenfeld  and  Goldenring 
would  say  to  Mannheim  occasionally: 

Be  careful ! You  are  going  too  far.” 

There^s  no  danger/^  Mannheim  would  say.  And  he  would 
go  on  with  it. 

Christophe  never  noticed  anything.  He  used  to  go  to  the 
office  of  the  Eeview,  leave  his  copy,  and  not  bother  about  it 
any  more.  Sometimes  he  would  take  Mannheim  aside  and  say: 

This  time  I really  have  done  for  the  swine.  J ust  read.  . . .” 

Mannheim  would  read. 

Well,  what  do  you  think  of  it  ? ” 

Terrible,  my  dear  fellow,  there’s  nothing  left  of  them ! ” 

What  do  you  think  they  will  say  ? ” 

Oh ! there  will  be  a fine  row.” 

But  there  never  was  a row.  On  the  contrary,  everybody 
beamed  at  Christophe:  people  whom  he  detested  would  bow  to 
him  in  the  street.  One  day  he  came  to  the  office  uneasy  and 
scowling:  and,  throwing  a visiting  card  on  the  table,  he  asked: 

What  does  this  mean  ? ” 

It  was  the  card  of  a musician  whom  he  slaughtered. 

A thousand  thanhs/' 

Mannheim  replied  with  a laugh: 

It  is  ironical.” 

Christophe  was  set  at  rest. 


432 


JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 


Oh ! he  said.  I was  afraid  my  article  had  pleased  him.^^ 

^^He  is  furious,”  said  Ehrenfeld:  ^^but  he  does  not  wish  to 
seem  so : he  is  posing  as  the  strong  man,  and  is  just  laughing.” 

Laughing  ? . . . Swine ! ” said  Christophe,  furious  once 
more.  shall  write  another  article  about  him.  He  laughs 
best  who  laughs  last.” 

^^No,  no,”  said  Waldhaus  anxiously.  don’t  think  he  is 
laughing  at  you.  It  is  humility:  he  is  a good  Christian.  He 
is  holding  out  the  other  cheek  to  the  smiter.” 

So  much  the  better ! ” said  Christophe.  Ah ! Coward ! 

He  has  asked  for  it:  he  shall  have  his  flogging.” 

Waldhaus  tried  to  intervene.  But  the  others  laughed. 

Let  him  be  . . .”  said  Mannheim. 

After  all  . . .”  replied  Waldhaus,  suddenly  reassured,  ^^a 
little  more  or  less  makes  no  matter!  . . .” 

Christophe  went  away.  His  colleagues  rocked  and  roared 
with  laughter.  When  they  had  had  their  fill  of  it  Waldhaus  < 
said  to  Mannheim:  i 

All  the  same,  it  was  a narrow  squeak.  . . . Please  be  care-  i 
ful.  We  shall  be  caught  yet.” 

Bah ! ” said  Mannheim.  We  have  plenty  of  time.  ...  \ 

And  besides,  I am  making  friends  for  him.”  i 


ENGULFED  J 

Christophe  had  got  so  far  with  his  clumsy  efforts  towards  | 
the  reform  of  German  art  when  there  happened  to  pass  through  j 
the  town  a troupe  of  French  actors.  It  would  be  more  exact  to  ' 
say,  a band ; for,  as  usual,  they  were  a collection  of  poor  devils, 
picked  up  goodness  knows  where,  and  young  unknown  players  ^ 
too  happy  to  learn  their  art,  provided  they  were  allowed  to  act.  . 
They  were  all  harnessed  to  the  chariot  of  a famous  and  elderly  | 
actress  who  was  making  tour  of  Germany,  and  passing  through  | 
the  little  princely  town,  gave  their  performances  there. 

Waldhaus’  review  made  a great  fuss  over  them.  Mannheim 
and  his  friends  knew  or  pretended  to  know  about  the  literary  and 


I 


EEVOLT  433 

social  life  of  Paris:  they  used  to  repeat  gossip  picked  up  in 
the  boulevard  newspapers  and  more  or  less  understood;  they 
represented  the  French  spirit  in  Germany.  That  robbed  Chris- 
tophe  of  any  desire  to  know  more  about  it.  Mannheim  used 
to  overwhelm  him  with  praises  of  Paris.  He  had  been  there 
several  times;  certain  members  of  his  family  were  there.  He 
had  relations  in  every  country  in  Europe,  and  they  had  every- 
where assumed  the  nationality  and  aspect  of  the  country : this 
tribe  of  the  seed  of  Abraham  included  an  English  baronet, 
a Belgian  senator,  a French  minister,  a deputy  in  the  Eeichstag, 
- and  a Papal  Count;  and  all  of  them,  although  they  were  united 
and  filled  with  respect  for  the  stock  from  which  they  sprang, 
were  sincerely  English,  Belgian,  French,  German,  or  Papal,  for 
their  pride  never  allowed  of  doubt  that  the  country  of  their 
adoption  was  the  greatest  of  all.  Mannheim  was  paradoxically 
the  only  one  of  them  who  was  pleased  to  prefer  all  the  countries 
to  which  he  did  not  belong.  He  used  often  to  talk  of  Paris  en- 
thusiastically, but  as  he  was  always  extravagant  in  his  talk,  and, 
by  way  of  praising  the  Parisians,  used  to  represent  them  as  a 
species  of  scatterbrains,  lewd  and  rowdy,  who  spent  their  time 
in  love-making  and  revolutions  without  ever  taking  them- 
selves seriously,  Christophe  was  not  greatly  attracted  by  the 
Byzantine  and  decadent  republic  beyond  the  Vosges.^^  He  used 
rather  to  imagine  Paris  as  it  was  presented  in  a naive  engraving 
which  he  had  seen  as  a frontispiece  to  a book  that  had  recently 
appeared  in  a German  art  publication ; the  Devil  of  Notre  Dame 
appeared  huddled  up  above  the  roofs  of  the  town  with  the 
legend : 

Eternal  luxury  like  an  insatiable  Vampire  devours  its  prey 
above  the  great  cityf^ 

Like  a good  German  he  despised  the  debauched  Yolcae  and 
their  literature,  of  which  he  only  knew  lively  buffooneries  like 
' UAiglon,  Madame  Sans  Oene,  and  a few  cafe  songs.  The  snob- 

I bishness  of  the  little  town,  where  those  people  who  were  most 

' notoriously  incapable  of  being  interested  in  art  flocked  noisily 

j to  take  places  at  the  box  office,  brought  him  to  an  affectation 

of  scornful  indifference  towards  the  great  actress.  He  vowed 
that  he  would  not  go  one  yard  to  hear  her.  It  was  the  easier 


434 


JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 


for  him  to  keep  his  promise  as  seats  had  reached  an  exorbitant 
price  which  he  could  not  afford. 

The  repertory  which  the  French  actors  had  brought  included 
a few  classical  pieces;  but  for  the  most  part  it  was  composed  ' 
of  those  idiotic  pieces  which  are  expressly  manufactured  in  j 
Paris  for  exportation,  for  nothing  is  more  international  than 
mediocrity.  Christophe  knew  La  Tosca,  which  was  to  be  the 
first  production  of  the  touring  actors;  he  had  seen  it  in  trans- 
lation adorned  with  all  those  easy  graces  which  the  company  of 
a little  Rhenish  theater  can  give  to  a French  play:  and  he 
laughed  scornfully  and  declared  that  he  was  very  glad,  when 
he  saw  his  friends  go  off  to  the  theater,  not  to  have  to  see  it 
again.  But  next  day  he  listened  none  the  less  eagerly,  without 
seeming  to  listen,  to  the  enthusiastic  tales  of  the  delightful 
evening  they  had  had:  he  was  angry  at  having  lost  the  right 
to  contradict  them  by  having  refused  to  see  what  everybody  was  ■ 
talking  about.  ; 

The  second  production  announced  was  a French  translation  ; 
of  Hamlet.  Christophe  had  never  missed  an  opportunity  of  : 
seeing  a play  of  Shakespeare’s.  Shakespeare  was  to  him  of  the 
same  order  as  Beethoven,  an  inexhaustible  spring  of  life.  Ham~  ( 
let  had  been  specially  dear  to  him  during  the  period  of  stress  ; 
and  tumultuous  doubts  through  which  he  had  just  passed.  In  ] 
spite  of  his  fear  of  seeing  himself  reflected  in  that  magic  mirror  ; 
he  was  fascinated  by  it:  and  he  prowled  about  the  theater  ; 
notices,  though  he  did  not  admit  that  he  was  longing  to  book  ^ 
a seat.  But  he  was  so  obstinate  that  after  what  he  had  said  j 
to  his  friends  he  would  not  eat  his  words:  and  he  would  have  \ 
stayed  at  home  that  evening  if  chance  had  not  brought  him  ‘ 
in  contact  with  Mannheim  just  as  he  was  sadly  going  home.  j 

Mannheim  took  his  arm  and  told  him  angrily,  though  he 
never  ceased  his  banter,  that  an  old  beast  of  a relation,  his 
father’s  sister,  had  just  come  down  upon  them  with  all  her 
retinue  and  that  they  had  all  to  stay  at  home  to  welcome  her. 

He  had  time  to  get  out  of  it:  but  his  father  would  brook  no 
trifling  with  questions  of  family  etiquette  and  the  respect  due 
to  elderly  relatives:  and  as  he  had  to  handle  his  father  care- 
fully because  he  wanted  presently  to  get  money  out  of  him, 
he  had  had  to  give  in  and  not  go  to  the  play. 


KEVOLT 


435 


You  had  tickets?^’  asked  Christophe. 

An  excellent  box:  and  I have  to  go  and  give  it — (I  am 
just  going  now) — ^to  that  old  pig,  Griinebaum,  papa^s  partner, 
so  that  he  can  swagger  there  with  the  she  Griinebaum  and  their 
turkey  hen  of  a daughter.  Jolly!  ...  I want  to  find 
something  very  disagreeable  to  say  to  them.  They  won’t  mind 
so  long  as  I give  them  the  tickets — although  they  would  much 
rather  they  were  banknotes.” 

He  stopped  short  with  his  mouth  open  and  looked  at  Chris- 
tophe : 

Oh ! but — but  just  the  man  I want ! ” He  chuckled : 

Christophe,  are  you  going  to  the  theater  ? ” 

No.” 

Good.  You  shall  go.  I ask  it  as  a favor.  You  cannot 
refuse.” 

Christophe  did  not  understand. 

But  I have  no  seat.” 

Here  you  are ! ” said  Mannheim  triumphantly,  thrusting 
the  ticket  into  his  hand. 

Y ou  are  mad,”  said  Christophe.  What  about  your  father’s 
orders  ? ” 

Mannheim  laughed: 

He  will  be  furious ! ” he  said. 

He  dried  his  eyes  and  went  on: 

shall  tap  him  to-morrow  morning  as  soon  as  he  is  up 
before  he  knows  anything.^’ 

I cannot  accept,”  said  Christophe,  knowing  that  he  would 
not  like  it.” 

It  does  not  concern  you : you  know  nothing  about  it.” 

Christophe  had  unfolded  the  ticket: 

And  what  would  I do  with  a box  for  four  ? ” 

Whatever  you  like.  You  can  sleep  in  it,  dance  if  you  like. 
Take  some  women.  You  must  know  some?  If  need  be  we 
can  lend  you  some.” 

Christophe  held  out  the  ticket  to  Mannheim: 

Certainly  not.  Take  it  back.” 

^^Not  I,”  said  Mannheim,  stepping  back  a pace.  ^^I  can’t 
force  you  to  go  if  it  bores  you,  but  I shan’t  take  it  back.  You 


436 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


can  throw  it  in  the  fire  or  even  take  it  virtuously  to  the  Griine- 
baums.  I don’t  care.  Good-night ! ” 

He  left  Christophe  in  the  middle  of  the  street,  ticket  in 
hand,  and  went  away. 

Christophe  was  unhappy  about  it.  He  said  to  himself  that 
he  ought  to  take  it  to  the  Griinebaums:  but  he  was  not  keen 
about  the  idea.  He  went  home  still  pondering,  and  when  later 
he  looked  at  the  clock  he  saw  that  he  had  only  just  time 
enough  to  dress  for  the  theater.  It  would  be  too  silly  to  waste 
the  ticket.  He  asked  his  mother  to  go  with  him.  But  Louisa 
declared  that  she  would  rather  go  to  bed.  He  went.  At  heart 
he  was  filled  with  childish  glee  at  the  thought  of  his  evening. 
Only  one  thing  worried  him:  the  thought  of  having  to  be 
alone  in  such  a pleasure.  He  had  no  remorse  about  Mann- 
heim’s father  or  the  Griinebaums,  whose  box  he  was  taking: 
but  he  was  remorseful  about  those  whom  he  might  have  taken 
with  him.  He  thought  of  the  joy  it  could  give  to  other  young  * 
people  like  himself : and  it  hurt  him  not  to  be  able  to  give  it  ; 
them.  He  cast  about  but  could  find  nobody  to  whom  he  could 
offer  his  ticket.  Besides,  it  was  late  and  he  must  hurry.  t 
As  he  entered  the  theater  he  passed  by  the  closed  window 
on  which  a poster  announced  that  there  was  not  a single  seat  , 
left  in  the  office.  Among  the  people  who  were  turning  away  : 
from  it  disappointedly  he  noticed  a girl  who  could  not  make  ^ 
up  her  mind  to  leave  and  was  enviously  watching  the  people  i 

going  in.  She  was  dressed  very  simply  in  black ; she  was  not  very  | 

tall;  her  face  was  thin  and  she  looked  delicate;  and  at  the  i 
moment  he  did  not  notice  whether  she  were  pretty  or  plain.  ; 
He  passed  her:  then  he  stopped,  turned,  and  without  stopping  t 

to  think : , • . 1,1  i 

“You  can’t  get  a seat,  Fraulein?”  he  asked  point-blank. 

‘ She  blushed  and  said  with  a foreign  accent : 

« No  sir/^ 

I have  a box  which  I don’t  know  what  to  do  with.  Will . 
yon  make  nse  of  it  with  me  ? ” 

She  blushed  again  and  thanked  him  and  said  she  could  not| 
accept.  Christophe  was  embarrassed  by  her  refusal^  begged  herl 
pardon  and  tried  to  insist,  but  he  could  not  persuade  her,! 


EEVOLT 


437 

although  it  was  obvious  that  she  was  dying  to  accept.  He 
was  very  perplexed.  He  made  up  his  mind  suddenly. 

“ There  is  a way  out  of  the  difficulty/’  he  said.  “ You  take 
the  ticket.  I don’t  want  it.  I have  seen  the  play.”  (He  was 
boasting).  “It  will  give  you  more  pleasure  than  me.  Take 
it,  please.” 

The  girl  was  so  touched  by  his  proposal  and  the  cordial 
manner  in  which  it  was  made  that  tears  all  but  came  to  her 
eyes.  She  murmured  gratefully  that  she  could  not  think  of 
depriving  him  of  it. 

“ Then,  come,”  he  said,  smiling. 

He  looked  so  kind  and  honest  that  she  was  ashamed  of 
having  refused,  and  she  said  in  some  confusion: 

“Thank  you.  I will  come.” 

They  went  in.  The  Mannheims’  box  was  wide,  big,  and  faced 
the  stage:  it  was  impossible  not  to  be  seen  in  it  if  they  had 
wished.  It  is  useless  to  say  that  their  entry  passed  unnoticed. 
Christophe  made  the  girl  sit  at  the  front,  while  he  stayed  a 
little  behind  so  as  not  to  embarrass  her.  She  sat  stiffly  up- 
right,  not  daring  to  turn  her  head:  she  was  horribly  shy:  she 
would  have  given  much  not  to  have  accepted.  To  give  her 
time  to  recover  her  composure  and  not  knowing  what  to  talk 
to  her  about,  Christophe  pretended  to  look  the  other  way.  Which- 
ever way  he  looked  it  was  easily  seen  that  his  presence  with  an 
unknown  companion  among  the  brilliant  people  of  the  boxes 
was  exciting  much  curiosity  and  comment.  He  darted  furious 
glances  at  those  who  were  looking  at  him : he  was  angry  that 
people  should  go  on  being  interested  in  him  when  he  took  no 
interest  in  them.  It  did  not  occur  to  him  that  their  indiscreet 
I curiosity  was  more  busied  with  his  companion  than  with  him- 
iself  and  that  there  was  more  offense  in  it.  By  way  of  showing 
ihis  utter  indifference  to  anything  they  might  say  or  think  he 
leaned  towards  the  girl  and  began  to  talk  to  her.  She  looked 
so  scared  by  his  talking  and  so  unhappy  at  having  to  reply, 
and  it  seemed  to  be  so  difficult  for  her  to  wrench  out  a “Yes” 
or  a “No”  without  ever  daring  to  look  at  him,  that  he  took 
ipity  on  her  shyness,  and  drew  back  to  a corner.  Fortunately 
the  play  began. 


438 


JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 


Christophe  had  not  seen  the  play  bill  and  he  hardly  cared 
to  know  what  part  the  great  actress  was  playing:  he  was  one 

of  al  simple  people  'ho  SO  to  the  theater  to  see  tlm  PlV 

and  not  the  actors.  He  had  never  wondered  whether  the  fa- 
mens  player  would  be  Ophelia  or  the  Queen;  if  he  had  wondered 
lout  it  L would  have  inclined  towards  the  Queen,  bearing  in 
mind  the  ages  of  the  two  ladies.  But  it  could  ^ver  have  o^ 
curred  to  him  that  she  would  play  Hamlet.  When  he  saw 
Hamlet,  and  heard  his  mechanical  dolly  squeak,  it  was  some 
time  before  he  could  believe  it;  he  wondered  if  he  were  not 

^^‘‘^But^who?  Who  is  it?”  he  asked  half  aloud.  “It  can’t 

^^And  when  he  had  to  accept  that  it  was  Hamlet,  he  rapped 
out  an  oath,  which  fortunately  his  companion  did  not 
hear,  because  she  was  a foreigner,  though  it 
in  the  next  box:  for  he  was  at  once  indignantly  bidden  to  be 
silent.  He  withdrew  to  the  back  of  the  box  to  swear  his  fiU 
He  could  not  recover  his  temper.  If  he  had  been  just  h 
would  have  given  homage  to  the  elegance  of  the  travesty  and  , 
the  tour  de  force  of  nature  and  art,  which  made  it  possible  for 
l ;lTn  of  sirfy  10  appeor  in  a youth’s  ; 

seem  beautiful  in  it— at  least  to  kindly  eyes.  But  he  h^ed  , 
all  tours  de  force,  everything  which  violates  and  \ 

ture  He  liked  a woman  to  be  a woman,  and  a man  a^  man.  . 
(K 'dot  not  often  happen  nowadays.)  The  chddieh  and  i 


(It  does  not  oiten  nappes  - 

absurd  travesty  of  the  Leonora  of  Beethoven  did  please 

aosuru  i-idvc  j-  wnss  bevond  all  dreams 


esty  ot  tne  nieouora  uj.  - a , 

him  much.  But  this  travesty  of  Hamlet  was  beyond  all  dreams  * 
of  the  nreposterous.  To  make  of  the  robust  Dane,  fat  and  | 
nale  choleric  cunning,  intellectual,  subject  to  hallucinations,- 
rw^man-not  even  a^woman:  for  a woman  playing  the  man 
cZ  Zh  be  a monster,-to  make  of  Hamlet  a eunuch  or  an 
androgynous  betwixt  and  between,-the  times  must  1^^  ^by 
indeed  criticism  must  be  idiotic,  to  let  ^ 

tolerated  for  a single  day  not  hissed  off  the  ’ 

actress’s  voice  infuriated  Christophe.  She  ^ g 

labored  diction,  that  monotonous  melopceia  ^^ich  see 
have  been  dear  to  the  least  poetic  people  in  the  world  since 
ttTdrys  of  the  CUmpm.sU  and  the  IMUl  de  Bourgogne. 


EEVGLT 


439 


Christophe  was  so  exasperated  by  it  that  he  wanted  to  go  away. 
He  turned  his  back  on  the  scene,  and  he  made  hideous  faces 
against  the  wall  of  the  box  like  a child  put  in  the  corner. 
Fortunately  his  companion  dared  not  look  at  him:  for  if  she 
had  seen  him  she  would  have  thought  him  mad. 

Suddenly  Christophe  stopped  making  faces.  He  stopped  still 
and  made  no  sound.  A lovely  musical  voice,  a young  woman^s 
voice,  grave  and  sweet,  was  heard.  Christophe  pricked  his 
ears.  As  she  went  on  with  her  words  he  turned  again,  keenly 
interested  to  see  what  bird  could  warble  so.  He  saw  Ophelia. 
In  truth  she  was  nothing  like  the  Ophelia  of  Shakespeare.  She^, 
was  a beautiful  girl,  tall,  big  and  fine  like  a young  fresh  statue 
— Electra  or  Cassandra.  She  was  brimming  with  life.  In  spite 
of  her  efforts  to  keep  within  her  part,  the  force  of  youth  and 
joy  that  was  in  her  shone  forth  from  her  body,  her  movements, 
her  gestures,  her  brown  eyes  that  laughed  in  spite  of  herself. 
Such  is  the  power  of  physical  beauty  that  Christophe  who  a 
moment  before  had  been  merciless  in  judging  the  interpreta- 
tion of  Hamlet  never  for  a moment  thought  of  regretting  that 
I Ophelia  was  hardly  at  all  like  his  image  of  her:  and  he  sacri- 
ificed  his  image  to  the  present  vision  of  her  remorselessly.  With 
[the  unconscious  faithlessness  of  people  of  passion  he  even  found 
I a profound  truth  in  the  youthful  ardor  brimming  in  the 
jdepths  of  the  chaste  and  unhappy  virgin  heart.  But  the  magic 
jof  the  voice,  pure,  warm,  and  velvety,  worked  the  spell:  every 
jword  sounded  like  a lovely  chord:  about  every  syllable  there 
jhovered  like  the  scent  of  thyme  or  wild  mint  the  laughing 
jaccent  of  the  Midi  with  its  full  rhythm.  Strange  was  this 
vision  of  an  Ophelia  from  Arles ! In  it  was  something  of  that 
golden  sun  and  its  wild  northwest  wind,  its  mistral, 

Christophe  forgot  his  companion  and  came  and  sat  by  her 
side  at  the  front  of  the  box:  he  never  took  his  eyes  off  the 
beautiful  actress  whose  name  he  did  not  know.  But  the  audi- 
ence who  had  not  come  to  see  an  unknown  player  paid  no 
attention  to  her,  and  only  applauded  when  the  female  Hamlet 
spoke.  That  made  Christophe  growl  and  call  them : Idiots ! 
in  a low  voice  which  could  be  heard  ten  yards  away. 

It  was  not  until  the  curtain  was  lowered  upon  the 'first  act 
that  he  remembered  the  existence  of  his  companion,  and  seeing 


440 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


that  she  was  still  shy  he  thought  with  a smile  of  how  he  must 
have  scared  her  with  his  extravagances.  He  was  not  far  wrong : 
the  girl  whom  chance  had  thrown  in  his  company  for  a few 
hours  was  almost  morbidly  shy;  she  must  have  been  in  an 
abnormal  state  of  excitement  to  have  accepted  Christophers 
invitation.  She  had  hardly  accepted  it  than  she  had  wished  at 
any  cost  to  get  out  of  it,  to  make  some  excuse  and  to  escape. 
It  had  been  much  worse  for  her  when  she  had  seen  that  she 
was  an  object  of  general  curiosity,  and  her  unhappiness  had 
been  increased  almost  past  endurance  when  she  heard  behind 
her  back — (she  dared  not  turn  round) — ^her  companion’s  low 
growls  and  imprecations.  She  expected  anything  now,  and 
when  he  came  and  sat  by  her  she  was  frozen  with  terror : what 
eccentricity  would  he  commit  next?  She  would  gladly  have 
sunk  into  the  ground  fathoms  down.  She  drew  back  instinc- 
tively: she  was  afraid  of  touching  him. 

But  all  her  fears  vanished  when  the  interval  came  and  she 
heard  him  say  quite  kindly:  ' 

am  an  unpleasant  companion,  eh?  I beg  your  pardon.”  ’ 
Then  she  looked  at  him  and  saw  his  kind  smile  which  had  ^ 
induced  her  to  come  with  him.  * 

He  went  on:  ; 

I cannot  hide  what  I think.  . . . But  you  know  it  is  too  ; 
much!  . . . That  woman,  that  old  woman!  ...”  , 

He  made  a face  of  disgust.  1 

She  smiled  and  said  in  a low  voice:  \ 

^^It  is  fine  in  spite  of  everything.”  | 

He  noticed  her  accent  and  asked:  5 

^^You  are  a foreigner?”  t 

^^Yes,”  said  she.  ‘ 

He  looked  at  her  modest  gown. 

A governess  ? ” he  said. 

^^Yes.” 

^^What  nationality?” 

She  said : 

am  French.” 

He  made  a gesture  of  surprise: 

French?  I should  not  have  thought  it.” 

^^Why?”  she  asked  tinfidly.  ; 


EEVOLT 


441 


. . . Are  you 

One  would  never 


You  are  so  . . . serious  ! said  he. 

(She  thought  it  was  net  altogether  a compliment  from  him.) 

There  are  serious  people  also  in  France/^  said  she  con- 
fusedly. 

He  looked  at  her  honest  little  face,  with  its  broad  forehead, 
little  straight  nose,  delicate  chin,  and  thin  cheeks  framed  in 
her  chestnut  hair.  It  was  not  she  that  he  saw : he  was  thinking 
of  the  beautiful  actress.  He  repeated: 

It  is  strange  that  you  should  be  French ! 
really  of  the  same  nationality  as  Ophelia? 
think  it.^^ 

After  a moment’s  silence  he  went  on: 

How  beautiful  she  is ! ” without  noticing  that  he  seemed  to 
be  making  a comparison  between  the  actress  and  his  companion 
that  was  not  at  all  flattering  to  her.  But  she  felt  it:  but  she 
did  not  mind : for  she  was  of  the  same  opinion.  He  tried  to  And 
out  about  the  actress  from  her:  but  she  knew  nothing:  it  was 
plain  that  she  did  not  know  much  about  the  theater. 

You  must  be  glad  to  hear  French  ? ” he  asked.  He  meant 
it  in  jest,  but  he  touched  her. 

Ah ! ” she  said  with  an  accent  of  sincerity  which  struck 
him,  it  does  me  so  much  good ! I am  stifled  here.” 

He  looked  at  her  more  closely:  she  clasped  her  hands,  and 
seemed  to  be  oppressed.  But  at  once  she  thought  of  how  her 
words  might  hurt  him: 

Forgive  me,”  she  said.  I don’t  know  what  I am  saying.” 

He  laughed: 

Don’t  beg  pardon ! You  are  quite  right.  You  don’t  need 
:o  be  French  to  be  stifled  here.  Ouf ! ” 

He  threw  back  bis  shoulders  and  took  a long  breath. 

But  she  was  ashamed  of  having  been  so  free  and  relapsed  into 
[dlence.  Besides  she  had  just  seen  that  the  people  in  the  boxes 
lext  to  them  were  listening  to  what  they  were  saying:  he 
loticed  it  too  and  was  wrathful.  They  broke  off:  and  until 
he  end  of  the  interval  he  went  out  into  the  corridor.  The 
Jprl’s  words  were  ringing  in  his  ears,  but  he  was  lost  in  dreams : 
he  image  of  Ophelia  filled  his  thoughts.  During  the  succeed- 
,ng  acts  she  took  hold  of  him  completely,  and  when  the  beautiful 
iictress  came  to  the  mad  scene  and  the  melancholv  sonsfs  of 


442  JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 

love  and  death,  her  voice  gave  forth  notes  so  moving  that  he 
was  bowled  over:  he  felt  that  he  was  going  to  burst  into  tears. 
Angry  with  himself  for  what  he  took  to  be  a sign  of  weakness— 
(for  he  would  not  admit  that  a true  artist  can  weep)  and 
not  wishing  to  make  an  object  of  himself,  he  left  the  box 
abruptly.  .The  corridors  and  the  foyer  were  empty.  In  his 
agitation  he  went  down  the  stairs  of  the  theater  and  went  out 
without  knowing  it.  He  had  to  breathe  the  cold  night  air, 
and  to  go  striding  through  the  dark,  half-empty  streets.  He 
came  to  himself  by  the  edge  of  a canal,  and  leaned  on  the  para- 
pet of  the  bank  and  watched  the  silent  water  whereon  the  re- 
flections of  the  street  lamps  danced  in  the  darkness.  His  soul 
was  like  that;  it  was  dark  and  heaving;  he  could  see  nothing 
in  it  but  great  joy  dancing  on  the  surface.  The  clocks  rang 
the  hour.  It  was  impossible  for  him  to  go  back  to  the  theater 
and  hear  the  end  of  the  play.  To  see  the  triumph  of  Fortin- 
bras?  No,  that  did  not  tempt  him.  A fine  triumph  that! 
Who  thinks  of  envying  the  conqueror?  Who  would  be  he  after, 
being  gorged  with  all  the  wild  and  absurd  savagery  of  life?} 
The  whole  play  is  a formidable  indictment  of  life.  But  there 
is  such  a power  of  life  in  it  that  sadness  becomes  joy,  and 
bitterness  intoxicates.  ... 

Christophe  went  home  without  a thought  for  the  unknown 
girl,  whose  name  even  he  had  not  ascertained. 

Next  morning  he  went  to  see  the  actress  at  the  little  third-^ 
rate  hotel  in  which  the  impresario  had  quartered  her  with  her| 
comrades  while  the  great  actress  had  put  up  at  the  best  hotel 
in  the  town.  He  was  conducted  to  a very  untidy  room  where 
the  remains  of  breakfast  were  left  on  an  open  piano,  together 
with  hairpins  and  torn  and  dirty  sheets  of  music.  In  the  next 
room  Ophelia  was  singing  at  the  top  of  her  voice,  like  a child, 
for  the  pleasure  of  making  a noise.  She  stopped  for  a moment 
when  her  visitor  was  announcefd  to  ask  merrily  in  a loud  voice 
without  ever  caring  whether  she  were  heard  through  the  wall ; 

''What  does  he  want?  What  is  his  name?  Christophe? 
Christophe  what  ? Christophe  Krafft  ? What  a name ! 

(She  repeated  it  two  or  three  times,  rolling  her  r’s  terribly.) 

" It  is  like  a swear 


EEVOLT 


443 


(She  swore.) 

he  young  or  old?  Pleasant?  Very  well.  I’ll  come.’^ 

She  began  to  sing  again: 

''Nothing  is  sweeter  than  my  love  . . while  she  rushed 

about  her  room  cursing  a tortoise-shell  pin  which  had  got  lost 
in  all  the  rubbish.  She  lost  patience,  began  to  grumble,  and 
roared.  Although  he  could  not  see  her  Christophe  followed  all 
her  movements  on  the  other  side  of  the  wall  in  imagination 
and  laughed  to  himself.  At  last  he  heard  steps  approaching, 
the  door  was  flung  open,  and  Ophelia  appeared. 

She  was  half  dressed,  in  a loose  gown  which  she  was  holding 
about  her  waist:  her  bare  arms  showed  in  her  wide  sleeves: 
her  hair  was  carelessly  done,  and  locks  of  it  fell  down  into 
her  eyes  and  over  her  cheeks.  Her  fine  brown  eyes  smiled,  her 
lips  smiled,  her  cheeks  smiled,  and  a charming  dimple  in  her 
chin  smiled.  In  her  beautiful  grave  melodious  voice  she  asked 
him  to  excuse  her  appearance.  She  knew  that  there  was  noth- 
ing to  excuse  and  that  he  could  only  be  very  grateful  to  her 
for  it.  She  thought  he  was  a journalist  come  to  interview  her. 
Instead  of  being  annoyed  when  he  told  her  that  he  had  come 
to  her  entirely  of  his  own  accord  and  because  he  admired  her, 
she  was  delighted.  She  was  a good  girl,  affectionate,  delighted 
to  please,  and  making  no  effort  to  conceal  her  delight.  Chris- 
tophe’s  visit  and  his  enthusiasm  made  her  very  happy — (she 
was  not  yet  spoiled  by  flattery).  She  was  so  natural  in  all  her 
movements  and  ways,  even  in  her  little  vanities  and  her  naive 
delight  in  giving  pleasure,  that  he  was  not  embarrassed  for  a 
single  moment.  They  became  old  friends  at  once.  He  could 
jabber  a few  words  of  French:  and  she  could  jabber  a few 
words  of  German : after  an  hour  they  told  each  other  all  their 
secrets.  She  never  thought  of  sending  him  away.  The  splen- 
did gay  southern  creature,  intelligent  and  warm-hearted,  who 
would  have  been  bored  to  tears  with  her  stupid  companions  and 
in  a country  whose  language  she  did  not  know,  a country  with- 
out the  natural  joy  that  was  in  herself,  was  glad  to  And  some 
]me  to  talk  to.  As  for  Christophe  it  was  an  untold  blessing  for 
Itiim  to  meet  the  free-hearted  girl  of  the  Midi  filled  with 
jthe  life  of  the  people,  in  the  midst  of  his  narrow  and  insincere 
tellow  citizens.  He  did  not  yet  know  the  workings  of  such 


444 


JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 


natures  which,  unlike  the  Germans,  have  no  more  in  their 
minds  and  hearts  than  they  show,  and  often  not  even  as  much. 
But  at  the  least  she  was  young,  she  was  alive,  she  said  frankly, 
rawly,  what  she  thought:  she  judged  everything  freely  from  a 
new  and  a fresh  point  of  view : in  her  it  was  possible  to  breathe 
a little  of  the  northwest  wind  that  sweeps  away  mists.  She 
was  gifted.  Uneducated  and  unthinking,  she  could  at  once  feel 
with  her  whole  heart  and  be  sincerely  moved  by  things  which 
were  beautiful  and  good ; and  then,  a moment  later,  she  would 
burst  out  laughing.  /She  was  a coquette  and  made  eyes;  she 
did  not  mind  showing  her  bare  arms  and  neck  under  her  half 
open  gown;  she  would  have  liked  to  turn  Christophe’s  head, 
but  it  was  all  purely  instinctive.  There  was  no  thought  of 
gaining  her  own  ends  in  her,  and  she  much  preferred  to  laugh, 
and  talk  blithely,  to  be  a good  fellow,  a good  chum,  without 
ceremony  or  awkwardness.  She  told  him  about  the  under- 
world of  the  theater,  her  little  sorrows,  the  silly  susceptibilities  • 
of  her  comrades,  the  bickerings  of  Jezebel — (so  she  called  the  i 
great  actress) — who  took  good  care  not  to  let  her  shine.  He ! 
confided  his  sufferings  at  the  hands  of  the  Germans : she  clapped 
her  hands  and  played  chords  to  him.  She  was  kind  and  • 
would  not  speak  ill  of  anybody;  but  that  did  not  keep  her 
from  doing  so,  and  while  she  blamed  herself  for  her  malice, 
when  she  laughed  at  anybody,  she  had  a fund  of  mocking 
humor  and  that  realistic  and  witty  gift  of  observation  which ; 
belongs  to  the  people  of  the  South;  she  could  not  resist  it  and; 
drew  cuttingly  satirical  portraits.  With  her  pale  lips  shej 
laughed  merrily  to  show  her  teeth,  like  those  of  a puppy,  and' 
dark  eyes  shone  in  her  pale  face,  which  was  a little  discolored  ; 
by  grease  paint.  i 

They  noticed  suddenly  that  they  had  been  talking  for  more 
than  an  hour.  Christophe  proposed  to  come  for  Corinne — (that 
was  her  stage  name) — in  the  afternoon  and  show  her  over  the 
town.  She  was  delighted  with  the  idea,  and  they  arranged  to 
meet  immediately  after  dinner. 

At  the  appointed  hour,  he  turned  up.  Corinne  was  sitting 
in  the  little  drawing-room  of  the  hotel,  with  a book  in  her 
hand,  which  she  was  reading  aloud.  She  greeted  him  with 
smiling  eyes  but  did  not  stop  reading  until  she  had  finished 


EEVOLT 


445 


her  sentence.  Then  she  signed  to  him  to  sit  down  on  the  sofa 
by  her  side : 

^^Sit  there/'  she  said,  "^and  don't  talk.  I am  going  over 
my  part.  I shall  have  finished  in  a quarter  of  an  hour." 

She  followed  the  script  with  her  finger  nail  and  read  very 
quickly  and  carelessly  like  a little  girl  in  a hurry.  He  offered 
to  hear  her  her  words.  She  passed  him  the  book  and  got  up  to 
repeat  what  she  had  learned.  She  fioundered  and  would  re- 
peat the  end  of  one  sentence  four  times  before  going  on  to  the 
next.  She  shook  her  head  as  she  recited  her  part;  her  hair- 
pins fell  down  and  all  over  the  room.  When  she  could  not 
recollect  sometimes  some  word  she  was  as  impatient  as  a naughty 
child;  sometimes  she  swore  comically  or  she  would  use  big 
words — one  word  with  which  she  apostrophized  herself  was 
very  big  and  very  short.  Christophe  was  astonished  by  the 
mixture  of  talent  and  childishness  in  her.  She  would  produce 
moving  tones  of  voice  quite  aptly,  but  in  the  middle  of  a speech 
into  which  she  seemed  to  be  throwing  her  whole  heart  she 
would  say  a whole  string  of  words  that  had  absolutely  no 
meaning.  She  recited  her  lesson  like  a parrot,  without  trou- 
bling about  its  meaning,  and  then  she  produced  burlesque  non- 
sense. She  did  not  worry  about  it.  When  she  saw  it  she  would 
shout  with  laughter.  At  last  she  said : ""  Zut ! ",  snatched  the 
book  from  him,  fiung  it  into  a corner  of  the  room,  and  said : 

Holidays!  The  hour  has  struck!  . . . Now  let  us  go 

out." 

^ He  was  a little  anxious  about  her  part  and  asked; 

You  think  you  will  know  it?" 

I She  replied  confidently: 

Certainly.  What  is  the  prompter  for?"  She  went  into 
her  room  to  put  on  her  hat.  Christophe  sat  at  the  piano  while 
he  was  waiting  for  her  and  struck  a few  chords.  From  the 
aext  room  she  called; 

Oh ! What  is  that?  Play  some  more ! How  pretty  it  is ! " 
She  ran  in,  pinning  on  her  hat.  He  went  on.  When  he  had 
dnished  she  wanted  him  to  play  more.  She  went  into  ecstasies 
vith  all  the  little  arch  exclamations  habitual  to  Frenchwomen 
rvhich  they  make  about  Tristan  and  a cup  of  chocolate  equally, 
t made  Christophe  laugh ; it  was  a change  from  the  tremendous 


446 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


affected,  clumsy  exclamations  of  the  Germans;  they  were  both 
exaggerated  in  different  directions;  one  made  a mountain^out 
of  a mole-hill,  the  other  made  a mole-hill  out  of  a mountain; 
the  French  was  not  less  ridiculous  than  the  German,  hut  for 
the  moment  it  seemed  more  pleasant  because  he  loved  the  lips 
from  which  it  came.  Corinne  wanted  to  know  what  he  was 
playing,  and  when  she  learned  that  he  had  composed  it  she 
gave  a shout.  He  had  told  her  during  their  conversation  m 
the  morning  that  he  was  a composer,  but  she  had  hardly 
listened  to  him.  She  sat  by  him  and  insisted  on  his  playing 
everything  that  he  had  composed.  Their  walk  was  forgotten. 
It  was  not  mere  politeness  on  her  part ; she  adored  music  and 
had  an  admirable  instinct  for  it  which  supplied  the  deficiencies 
of  her  education.  At  first  he  did  not  take  her  seriously  and 
played  his  easiest  melodies.  But  when  he  had  played  a passage 
by  which  he  set  more  store  and  saw  that  she  preferred  it  too,, 
although  he  had  not  said  anything  about  it,  he  was  joyfully, 
surprised.  With  the  naive  astonishment  of  the  Germans  when- 
they  meet  a Frenchman  who  is  a good  musician  he  said:  • 

“ Odd.  How  good  your  taste  is ! I should  never  have  thought 

it  . . .”  , f 

Corinne  laughed  in  his  face.  * 

He  amused  himself  then  by  selecting  compositions  more  and 
more  difficult  to  understand,  to  see  how  far  she  would  go 
with  him.  But  she  did  not  seem  to  be  put  out  by  his  boldness, 
and  after  a particularly  new  melody  which  Christophe  himself 
had  almost  come  to  doubt  because  he  had  never  succeeded  ii^ 
having  it  accepted  in  Germany,  he  was  greatly  astonished  when 
Corinne  begged  him  to  play  it  again,  and  she  got  up  and  be^n 
to  sing  the  notes  from  memory  almost  without  a mistake . H^ 
turned  towards  her  and  took  her  hands  warmly . 

“ But  you  are  a musician ! ” he  cried. 

She  began  to  laugh  and  explained  that  she  had  made  hei 
debut  as  a singer  in  provincial  opera  houses,  but  that  an  im- 
presario of  touring  companies  had  recognized  her  dispositior 
towards  the  poetic  theater  and  had  enrolled  her  in  its  services 
He  exclaimed: 

« What  a pity ! ” 


EEVOLT 


447 


Why  ? ” said  she.  Poetry  also  is  a sort  of  music.” 

She  made  him  explain  to  her  the  meaning  of  his  Lieder; 
he  told  her  the  German  words,  and  she  repeated  them  with 
easy  mimicry,  copying  even  the  movements  of  his  lips  and  eyes 
as  he  pronounced  the  words.  When  she  had  these  to  sing  from 
memory,  then  she  made  grotesque  mistakes,  and  when  she 
forgot,  she  invented  words,  guttural  and  barbarously  sonorous, 
which  made  them  both  laugh.  She  did  not  tire  of  making  him 
play,  nor  he  of  playing  for  her  and  hearing  her  pretty  voice; 
she  did  not  know  the  tricks  of  the  trade  and  sang  a little  from 
the  throat  like  little  girls,  and  there  was  a curious  fragile 
quality  in  her  voice  that  was  very  touching.  She  told  him 
frankly  what  she  thought.  Although  she  could  not  explain 
why  she  liked  or  disliked  anything  there  was  always  some  grain 
of  sense  hidden  in  her  judgment.  The  odd  thing  was  that  she 
found  least  pleasure  in  the  most  classical  passages  which  were 
most  appreciated  in  Germany ; she  paid  him  a few  compliments 
out  of  politeness;  but  they  obviously  meant  nothing.  As  she 
had  no  musical  culture  she  had  not  the  pleasure  which  ama- 
teurs and  even  artists  find  in  what  is  already  heard,  a pleasure 
which  often  makes  them  unconsciously  reproduce,  or,  in  a new 
composition,  like  forms  or  formulae  which  they  have  already 
used  in  old  compositions.  Nor  did  she  have  the  German  taste 
for  melodious  sentimentality  (or,  at  least,  her  sentimentality 
was  different;  Christophe  did  not  yet  know  its  failings) — she 
did  not  go  into  ecstasies  over  the  soft  insipid  music  preferred 
in  Germany;  she  did  not  single  out  the  most  melodious  of  his 
Lieder, — a melody  which  he  would  have  liked  to  destroy  be- 
cause his  friends,,  only  too  glad  to  be  able  to  compliment 
him  on  something,  were  always  talking  about  it.  Corinne^s 
dramatic  instinct  made  her  prefer  the  melodies  which  frankly- 
reproduced  a certain  passion;  he  also  set  most  store  by  them. 
And  yet  she  did  not  hesitate  to  show  her  lack  of  sympathy  with 
certain  rude  harmonies  which  seemed  quite  natural  to  Chris- 
tophe ; they  gave  her  a sort  of  shock  when  she  came  upon  them ; 
she  would  stop  then  and  ask  if  it  was  really  so.”  When  he  said 
^^Yes,”  then  she  would  rush  at  the  difficulty;  but  she  would 
make  a little  grimace  which  did  not  escape  Christophe.  Some- 


448 


JEAN-CHKISTOPHE 


times  even  she  would  prefer  to  skip  the  bar.  Then  he  would 
play  it  again  on  the  piano. 

“You  don’t  like  that?”  he  would  ask. 

She  would  screw  up  her  nose. 

“ It  is  wrong,”  she  would  say. 

“Not  at  all,”  he  would  reply  with  a laugh.  “It  is  quite 
right.  Think  of  its  meaning.  It  is  rhymthic,  isn’t  it  ? ” 

(He  pointed  to  her  heart.) 

But  she  would  shake  her  head: 

“May  be;  but  it  is  wrong  here.”  (She  pulled  her  ear.) 

And  she  would  be  a little  shocked  by  the  sudden  outbursts 
of  German  declamation. 

“Wliy  should  he  talk  so  loud?”  she  would  ask.  “He  is 
all  alone.  Aren’t  you  afraid  of  his  neighbors  overhearing  him? 

It  is  as  though— (Forgive  me!  You  won’t  be  angry?)— he 
were  hailing  a boat.” 

He  was  not  angry;  he  laughed  heartily,  he  recognized  that 
there  was  some  truth  in  what  she  said.  Her  remarks  amused  : 
him;  nobody  had  ever  said  such  things  before.  They  agreed  : 
that  declamation  in  singing  generally  deforms  the  natural 
word  like  a magnifying  glass.  Corinne  asked  Christophe  to 
write  music  for  a piece  in  which  she  would  speak  to  the  ac- 
companiment of  the  orchestra,  singing  a few  sentences  every 
now  and  then.  He  was  fired  by  the  idea  in  spite  of  the  diffi- 
culties of  the  stage  setting  which,  he  thought,  Corinne’s  musi- 
cal voice  would  easily  overcome,  and  they  made  plans  for  the  . 
future.  It  was  not  far  short  of  five  o’clock  when  they  thought  j 
of  going  out.  Night  fell  early.  They  could  not  think  of  going  ■' 
for  a walk.  Corinne  had  a rehearsal  at  the  theater  in  the  ■ 
evening;  nobody  was  allowed  to  be  present.  She  made  him  j 
promise  to  come  and  fetch  her  during  the  next  afternoon  to 
take  the  walk  they  had  planned. 

Next  day  they  did  almost  the  same  again.  He  found  Corinne 
in  front  of  her  mirror,  perched  on  a high  stool,  swinging  her 
legs;  she  was  trying  on  a wig.  Pier  dresser  was  there  and  a 
hair  dresser  of  the  town  to  whom  she  was  giving  instructions 
about  a curl  which  she  wished  to  have  higher  up.  As  she 
looked  in  the  glass  she  saw  Christophe  smiling  behind  her 


EEVOLT  1 1 

back;  she  put  out  her  tongue  at  him.  T;;e  ;ha>:  dressr  ^ } t; 
away  with  the  wig  and  she  turned  ^aily  o ( v iFrophe: 

Good-day,  my  friend ! she  said. 

She  held  up  her  cheek  to  be  kissed.  He  hm  not  e^ipected 
such  intimacy,  but  he  took  advantage  of  it  all  irie  si  jit;.  She 
did  not  attach  so  much  importance  to  the  favo'  ; It  wae  to  her 
a greeting  like  any  other. 

Oh ! I am  happy ! said  she.  It  will  do  very  well 
night.^^  (She  was  talking  of  her  wig.)  was  so  -^retched! 
If  you  had  come  this  morning  you  would  have  fou7  ne  abso- 
lutely miserable.^^ 

He  asked  why. 

It  was  because  the  Parisian  hair  dresser  had  made  a mistake 
in  packing  and  had  sent  a wig  which  was  not  suitable  to  the 
part. 

Quite  flat,”  she  said,  and  falling  straight  down.  When 
I saw  it  I wept  like  a Magdalen.  Didnh  I,  Desiree?” 

When  I came  in,”  said  Desiree,  I was  afraid  for  Madame. 
Madame  was  quite  white.  Madame  looked  like  death.” 

Christophe  laughed.  Cbrinne  saw  him  in  her  mirror: 

Heartless  wretch ; it  makes  you  laugh,”  she  said  indig- 
nantly. 

She  began  to  laugh  too. 

He  asked  her  how  the  rehearsal  had  gone.  Everything  had 
gone  off  well.  She  would  have  liked  the  other  parts  to  be  cut 
more  and  her  own  less.  They  talked  so  much  that  they  wasted 
part  of  the  afternoon.  She  dressed  slowly;  she  amused  herself 
by  asking  Christophers  opinion  about  her  dresses.  Christophe 
i praised  her  elegance  and  told  her  naively  in  his  Franco-German 
, jargon,  that  he  had  never  seen  anybody  so  luxurions.^r  She 
looked  at  him  for  a moment  and  then  burst  out  laughing. 

I What  have  I said  ? ” he  asked.  Have  I said  anything 

; wrong  ? ” 

! Yes,  yes,rr  she  cried,  rocking  with  laughter.  You  have 
indeed.” 

At  last  they  went  out.  Her  striking  costume  and  her  ex- 
uberant chatter  attracted  attention.  She  looked  at  everything 
^with  her  mocking  eyes  and  made  no  effort  to  conceal  her  im- 
pressions. She  chuckled  at  the  dressmakers’  shops,  and  at  the 


. !ei  ; 


post-Ci 
dravi  ’ 


S- 


f’d'- 


EAN-CHEISTOPHE 

; . is  in  which  sentimental  scenes,  comic  and 
' ::c\vn  prostitutes,  the  imperial  family,  the 

■ e'Vi  - - aolding  the  wheel  of  the  Germania  and 

■ ■ ■'>rc  all  thrown  together  higgledy-piggledy. 

> rt;ririer-service  decoration  with  Wagner’s  cross- 

>r  at  a hair  dresser’s  shop-window  in  which  there 
^ ^ad  of  -r>  man.  She  made  no  attempt  to  modify 
tlv.  i iitriotic  monument  representing  the  old 
coat  and  a peaked  cap,  together  with 
' ! stes,  and  a nude  Genius  of  War.  She 

.e  i'emarkt  ...oac  anything  in  the  faces  of  the  people  or  their 
of  speaking  that  struck  her  as  funny.  Her  victims  were 
left  in  no  doubt  about  it  as  she  maliciously  picked  out  their 
absurdities.  Her  instinctive  mimicry  made  her  sometimes  imi- 
tate with  her  mouth  and  nose  their  broad  grimaces  and  frowns, 
without  thinking;  and  she  would  blow  out  her  cheeks  as  she 
repeated  fragments  of  sentences  and  words  that  struck  her  as 
grotesque  in  sound  as  she  caught  them.  He  laughed  heartily 
and  was  not  at  all  embarrassed  by  her  impertinence,  for  he  was 
no  longer  easily  embarrassed.  Fortunately  he  had  no  great 
reputation  to  lose,  or  his  walk  would  have  ruined  it  for  ever. 

They  visited  the  cathedral.  Corinne  wanted  to  go  to  the 
top  of  the  spire,  in  spite  of  her  high  heels,  and  long  dress  which 
swept  the  stairs  or  was  caught  in  a corner  of  the  staircase;  she 
did  not  worry  about  it,  but  pulled  the  stulf  which  split,  and 
went  on  climbing,  holding  it  up.  She  wanted  very  much  to 
ring  the  bells.  From  the  top  of  the  tower  she  declaimed  Victor 
Hugo  (he  did  not  understand  it),  and  sang  a popular  French 
song.  After  that  she  played  the  muezzin.  Dusk  was  falling. 
They  went  down  into  the  cathedral  where  the  dark  shadows 
were  creeping  along  the  gigantic  walls  in  which  the  magic  eyes 
of  the  windows  were  shining.  Kneeling  in  one  of  the  side 
chapels,  Christophe  saw  the  girl  who  had  shared  his  box  at 
Hamlet.  She  was  so  absorbed  in  her  prayers  that  she  did  not 
see  him ; he  saw  that  she  was  looking  sad  and  strained.  He 
would  have  liked  to  speak  to  her,  just  to  say,  ‘‘  How  do  you 
do  ? ” but  Corinne  dragged  him  off  like  a whirlwind. 

They  parted  soon  afterwards.  She  had  to  get  ready  for  the 
performance,  which  began  early,  as  usual  in  Germany.  He 


EEVOLT 


451 


had  hardly  reached  home  when  there  was  a ring  at  the  door 
and  a letter  from  Corinne  was  handed  in: 

^^Lnck!  Jezebel  ill!  No  performance!  No  school!  Come! 
Let  ns  dine  together ! Your  friend, 

CORINETTE. 

P.  S.  Bring  plenty  of  music ! 

It  was  some  time  before  he  understood.  When  he  did  under- 
stand he  was  as  happy  as  Corinne,  and  went  to  the  hotel  at 
once.  He  was  afraid  of  finding  the  whole  company  assembled 
at  dinner  5 but  he  saw  nobody.  Corinne  herself  was  not  there. 
At  last  he  heard  her  laughing  voice  at  the  back  of  the  house : 
he  went  to  look  for  her  and  found  her  in  the  kitchen.  She 
had  taken  it  into  her  head  to  cook  a dish  in  her  own  way,  one 
of  those  southern  dishes  which  fills  the  whole  neighborhood 
with  its  aroma  and  would  awaken  a stone.  She  was  on  excel- 
lent terms  with  the  large  proprietress  of  the  hotel,  and  they 
were  jabbering  in  a horrible  jargon  that  was  a mixture  of 
German,  French,  and  negro,  though  there  is  no  word  to  describe 
it  in  any  language.  They  were  laughing  loudly  and  making 
each  other  taste  their  cooking.  Christophers  appearance  made 
them  noisier  than  ever.  They  tried  to  push  him  out;  but  he 
I struggled  and  succeeded  in  tasting  the  famous  dish.  He  made 
I a face.  She  said  he  was  a barbarous  Teuton  and  that  it  was 
I no  use  putting  herself  out  for  him. 

They  went  up  to  the  little  sitting-room  when  the  table  was 
laid;  there  were  only  two  places,  for  himself  and  Corinne.  He 
could  not  help  asking  her  where  her  companions  were.  Corinne 
waved  her  hands  carelessly : 

I don’t  know.” 

Don’t  you  sup  together  ? ” 

1 Never ! We  see  enough  of  each  other  at  the  theater ! . . . 
[ And  it  would  be  awful  if  we  had  to  meet  at  meals ! . . .” 

It  was  so  different  from  German  custom  that  he  was  sur- 
I prised  and  charmed  by  it. 

I thought,”  he  said,  you  were  a sociable  people ! ” 

Well,”  said  she,  am  I not  sociable  ? ” 

Sociable  means  living  in  society.  We  have  to  see  each 


452 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


other!  Men,  women,  children,  we  all  belong  to  societies  from 
birth  to  death.  We  are  always  making  societies:  we  eat,  sing, 
think  in  societies.  When  the  societies  sneeze,  we  sneeze  too: 
we  don^t  have  a drink  except  with  onr  societies.^^ 

^^That  must  be  amnsing,^^  said  she.  ^^Why  not  out  of  the  | 
same  glass  ? I 

Brotherly,  isn’t  it?” 

That  for  fraternity  1 I like  being  ' brotherly  ’ with  people 
I like:  not  with  the  others  • . . Pooh!  That’s  not  society: 
that  is  an  ant  heap.” 

Well,  you  can  imagine  how  happy  I am  here,  for  I think 
as  you  do.” 

Come  to  us,  then ! ” 

He  asked  nothing  better.  He  questioned  her  about  Paris 
and  the  French.  She  told  him  much  that  was  not  perfectly 
accurate.  Her  southern  propensity  for  boasting  was  mixed 
with  an  instinctive  desire  to  shine  before  him.  According  to  - 
her,  everybody  in  Paris  was  free:  and  as  everybody  in  Paris  : 
was  intelligent,  everybody  made  good  use  of  their  liberty,  and  ’ 
no  one  abused  it.  Everybody  did  what  they  liked : thought,  , 
believed,  loved  or  did  not  love,  as  they  liked ; nobody  had  any-  i 
thing  to  say  about  it.  There  nobody  meddled  with  other  people’s  ! 
beliefs,  or  spied  on  their  consciences  or  tried  to  regulate  their  . 
thoughts.  There  politicians  never  dabbled  in  literature  or  the  . 
arts,  and  never  gave  orders,  jobs,  and  money  to  their  friends  ; 
or  clients.  There  little  cliques  never  disposed  of  reputation  or  j 
success,  journalists  were  never  bought;  there  n^en  of  letters  | 
never  entered  into  controversies  with  the  church,  that  could  lead 
to  nothing.  There  criticism  never  stifled  unknown  talent,  or  | 
exhausted  its  praises  upon  recognized  talent.  There  sue-  • 
cess,  success  at  all  costs,  did  not  justify  the  means, 
and  command  the  adoration  of  the  public.  There  were  only 
gentle  manners,  kindly  and  sweet.  There  was  never  any  bit- 
terness, never  any  scandal.  Everybody  helped  everybody  else. 
Every  worthy  newcomer  was  certain  to  find  hands  held  out  to 
him  and  the  way  made  smooth  for  him.  Pure  love  of  beauty  .. 
filled  the  chivalrous  and  disinterested  souls  of  the  French,  and 
they  were  only  absurd  in  their  idealism,  which,  in  spite  of  their 
acknowledged  wit,  made  them  the  dupes  of  other  nations. 


EEVOLT 


453 


Christophe  listened  open-mouthed.  It  was  certainly  mar- 
velous. Corinne  marveled  herself  as  she  heard  her  words. 
She  had  forgotten  what  she  had  told  Christophe  the  day  before 
.about  the  difficulties  of  her  past  life.  He  gave  no  more  thought 
to  it  than  she. 

And  yet  Corinne  was  not  only  concerned  with  making  the 
Germans  love  her  country:  she  wanted  to  make  herself  loved, 
too.  A whole  evening  without  flirtation  v/ould  have  seemed 
austere  and  rather  absurd  to  her.  She  made  eyes  at  Chris- 
tophe; but  it  was  trouble  wasted:  he  did  not  notice  it.  Chris- 
tophe did  not  know  what  it  was  to  flirt.  He  loved  or  did  not 
love.  When  he  did  not  love  he  was  miles  from  any  thought  of 
love.  He  liked  Corinne  enormously.  He  felt  the  attraction 
of  her  southern  nature;  it  was  so  new  to  him.  And  her  sweet- 
ness and  good  humor,  her  quick  and  lively  intelligence:  many 
more  reasons  than  he  needed  for  loving.  But  the  spirit  blows 
where  it  listeth.  It  did  not  blow  in  that  direction,  and  as  for 
playing  at  love,  in  lovers  absence,  the  idea  had  never  occurred 
to  him. 

Corinne  was  amused  by  his  coldness.  She  sat  by  his  side 
at  the  piano  while  he  played  the  music  he  had  brought  with 
him,  and  put  her  arm  round  his  neck,  and  to  follow  the  music 
she  leaned  towards  the  keyboard,  almost  pressing  her  cheek 
against  his.  He  felt  her  hair  touch  his  face,  and  quite  close 
to  him  saw  the  corner  of  her  mocking  eye,  her  pretty  little 
mouth,  and  the  light  down  on  her  tip-tilted  nose.  She  waited, 
smiling — she  waited.  Christophe  did  not  understand  the  invi- 
tation. Corinne  was  in  his  way:  that  was  all  he  thought  of. 
Mechanically  he  broke  free  from  her  and  moved  his  chair. 
And  when,  a moment  later,  he  turned  to  speak  to  Corinne,  he 
i saw  that  she  was  choking  with  laughter:  her  cheeks  were 
dimpled,  her  lips  were  pressed  together,  and  she  seemed  to  be 
holding  herself  in. 

What  is  the  matter  ? he  said,  in  his  astonishment. 

She  looked  at  him  and  laughed  aloud. 

He  did  not  understand. 

^^Why  are  you  laughing  he  asked.  ^^Did  I say  anything 
funny 

The  more  he  insisted,  the  more  she  laughed.  When  she 


454 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


had  almost  finished  she  had  only  to  look  at  his  crestfallen  ap- 
pearance to  break  out  again.  She  got  up,  ran  to  the  sofa  at 
the  other  end  of  the  room,  and  buried  her  face  in  the  cushions 
to  laugh  her  fill;  her  whole  body  shook  with  it.  He  began  to 
laugh  too,  came  towards  her,  and  slapped  her  on  the  back. 
When  she  had  done  laughing  she  raised  her  head,  dried  the 
tears  in  her  eyes,  and  held  out  her  hands  to  him. 

What  a good  boy  you  are ! she  said. 

No  worse  than  another.’^ 

She  went  on,  shaking  occasionally  with  laughter,  still  hold- 
ing his  hands. 

^^Frenchwomen  are  not  serious she  asked.  (She  pro- 
nounced it:  Frangouese/^) 

^^You  are  making  fun  of  me,^^  he  said  good-humoredly. 

She  looked  at  him  kindly,  shook  his  hands  vigorously,  and 
said: 

Friends  ? 

Friends ! said  he,  shaking  her  hand.  | 

You  will  think  of  Corinette  when  she  is  gone?  You  won^t 
be  angry  with  the  Frenchwoman  for  not  being  serious  ? t 

And  Corinette  won’t  be  angry  with  the  barbarous  Teuton  | 
for  being  so  stupid  ? ” 

That  is  why  she  loves  him.  ...  You  will  come  and  see  : 
her  in  Paris?” 

It  is  a promise.  . . . And  she — she  will  write  to  him  ? ” ; 

I swear  it.  . . . You  say : ^ I swear.’  ” { 

swear.”  | 

No,  not  like  that.  You  must  hold  up  your  hand.”  She  ; 
recited  the  oath  of  the  Horatii.  She  made  him  promise  to  1 
write  a play  for  her,  a melodrama,  which  could  be  translated  ' 
into  French  and  played  in  Paris  by  her.  She  was  going  away 
next  day  with  her  company.  He  promised  to  go  and  see  her 
again  the  day  after  at  Frankfort,  where  they  were  giving  a 
performance. 

They  stayed  talking  for  some  time.  She  presented  Chris- 
tophe  with  a photograph  in  which  she  was  much  decolletee, 
draped  only  in  a garment  fastening  below  her  shoulders.  They 
parted  gaily,  and  kissed  like  brother  and  sister.  And,  indeed, 
once  Corinne  had  seen  that  Christophe  was  fond  of  her,  but 


MB 


I 


EEVOLT  455 

not  at  all  in  love,  she  began  to  be  fond  of  him,  too,  without 
love,  as  a good  friend. 

Their  sleep  was  not  troubled  by  it.  He  could  not  see  her 
off  next  day,  because  he  was  occupied  by  a rehearsal.  But  on 
the  day  following  he  managed  to  go  to  Frankfort  as  he  had 
promised.  It  was  a few  hours’  journey  by  rail.  Corinne  hardly 
believed  Christophe’s  promise.  But  he  had  taken  it  seriously, 
and  when  the  performance  began  he  was  there.  When  he 
knocked  at  her  dressing-room  door  during  the  interval,  she 
gave  a cry  of  glad  surprise  and  threw  her  arms  round  his  neck 
with  her  usual  exuberance.  She  was  sincerely  grateful  to  him 
for  having  come.  Unfortunately  for  Christophe,  she  was  much 
more  sought  after  in  the  city  of  rich,  intelligent  Jews,  who 
could  appreciate  her  actual  beauty  and  her  future  success.  Al- 
most every  minute  there  was  a knock  at  the  door,  and  it  opened 
to  reveal  men  with  heavy  faces  and  quick  eyes,  who  said  the 
conventional  things  with  a thick  accent.  Corinne  naturally 
made  eyes,  and  then  she  would  go  on  talldng  to  Christophe  in 
the  same  affected,  provoking  voice,  and  that  irritated  him.  And 
he  found  no  pleasure  in  the  calm  lack  of  modesty  with  which 
she  went  on  dressing  in  his  presence,  and  the  paint  and  grease 
with  which  she  larded  her  arms,  throat,  and  face  filled  him 
with  profound  disgust.  He  was  on  the  point  of  going  away 
without  seeing  her  again  after  the  performance;  but  when  he 
said  good-bye  and  begged  to  be  excused  from  going  to  the 
supper  that  was  to  be  given  to  her  after  the  play,  she  was  so 
hurt  by  it  and  so  affectionate,  too,  that  he  could  not  hold  out 
against  her.  She  had  a time-table  brought,  so  as  to  prove  that 
he  could  and  must  stay  an  hour  with  her.  He  only  needed 
to  be  convinced,  and  he  was  at  the  supper.  He  was  even  able 
to  control  his  annoyance  with  the  follies  that  were  indulged 
in  and  his  irritation  at  Corinne’s  coquetries  with  all  and 
sundry.  It  was  impossible  to  be  angry  with  her.  She  was  an 
honest  girl,  without  any  moral  principles,  lazy,  sensual,  pleas- 
ure-loving, childishly  coquettish;  but  at  the  same  time  so  loyal, 
so  kind,  and  all  her  faults  were  so  spontaneous  and  so  healthy 
that  it  was  only  possible  to  smile  at  them  and  even  to  love 
them.  Christophe,  who  was  sitting  opposite,  her,  watched  her 
animation,  her  radiant  eyes,  her  sticky  lips,  with  their  Ital- 


456 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


ian  smile — that  smile  in  which  there  is  kindness,  subtlety,  and 
a sort  of  heavy  greediness.  He  saw  her  more  clearly  than  he 
had  yet  done.  Some  of  her  features  reminded  him  of  Ada: 
certain  gestures,  certain  looks,  certain  sensual  and  rather  coarse 
tricks — the  eternal  feminine.  But  what  he  loved  in  her  was  her 
southern  nature,  that  generous  nature  which  is  not  niggardly 
v/ith  its  gifts,  which  never  troubles  to  fashion  drawing-room 
beauties  and  literary  cleverness,  but  harmonious  creatures  who 
are  made  body  and  mind  to  grow  in  the  air  and  the  sun.  When 
he  left  she  got  up  from  the  table  to  say  good-bye  to  him  away 
from  the  others.  They  kissed  and  renewed  their  promises  to 
write  and  meet  again. 

He  took  the  last  train  home.  At  a station  the  train  coming 
from  the  opposite  direction  was  waiting.  In  the  carriage 
opposite  his — a third-class  compartment — Christophe  saw  the 
young  Frenchwoman  who  had  been  with  him  to  the  perform-  ‘ 
ance  of  Hamlet.  She  saw  Christophe  and  recognized  him. 
They  were  both  astonished.  They  bowed  and  did  not  move, 
and  dared  not  look  again.  And  yet  he  had  seen  at  once  that 
she  was  wearing  a little  traveling  toque  and  had  an  old  valise 
by  her  side.  It  did  not  occur  to  him  that  she  was  leaving 
the  country.  He  thought  she  must  be  going  away  for  a few  ■ 
days.  He  did  not  know  whether  he  ought  to  speak  to  her. 

He  stopped,  turned  over  in  his  mind  what  to  say,  and  was 
just  about  to  lower  the  window  of  the  carriage  to  address  a ! 
few  words  to  her,  when  the  signal  was  given.  He  gave  up  ^ 
the  idea.  A few  seconds  passed  before  the  train  moved.  They  j 
looked  straight  at  each  other.  Each  was  alone,  and  their  faces  i 
were  pressed  against  the  windows  and  they  looked  into  each  1 
other’s  eyes  through  the  night.  They  were  separated  by  two  i 
windows.  If  they  had  reached  out  their  hands  they  could 
have  touched  each  other.  So  near.  So  far.  The  carriages 
shook  heavily.  She  was  still  looking  at  him,  shy  no  longer, 
now  that  they  were  parting.  They  were  so  absorbed  in  look- 
ing at  each  other  that  they  never  even  thought  of  bowing  for 
the  last  time.  She  was  slowly  borne  away.  He  saw  her  dis- 
appear, and  the  train  which  bore  her  plunged  into  the  night. 
Like  two  circling  worlds,  they  had  passed  close  to  each  other  in 
infinite  space,  and  now  they  sped  apart  perhaps  for  eternity. 


EEVOLT 


457 


When  she  had  disappeared  he  felt  the  emptiness  that  her 
strange  eyes  had  left  in  him,  and  he  did  not  understand  why; 
but  the  emptiness  was  there.  Sleepy,  with  eyes  half-closed, 
lying  in  a corner  of  the  carriage,  he  felt  her  eyes  looking  into 
his,  and  all  other  thoughts  ceased,  to  let  him  feel  them  more 
keenly.  The  image  of  Corinne  fluttered  outside  his  heart  like 
an  insect  breaking  its  wings  against  a window ; but  he  did 
not  let  it  in. 

He  found  it  again  when  he  got  out  of  the  train  on  his  arri- 
val, when  the  keen  night  air  and  his  walk  through  the  streets 
of  the  sleeping  town  had  shaken  off  his  drowsiness.  He  scowled 
at  the  thought  of  the  pretty  actress,  with  a mixture  of  pleasure 
and  irritation,  according  as  he  recalled  her  affectionate  ways 
or  her  vulgar  coquetries. 

“ Oh ! these  French  people,”  he  growled,  laughing  softly, 
while  he  was  undressing  quietly,  so  as  not  to  waken  his  mother, 
who  was  asleep  in  the  next  room. 

A remark  that  he  had  heard  the  other  evening  in  the  box 
occurred  to  him : 

“ There  are  others  also.” 

At  his  first  encounter  with  France  she  laid  before  him  the 
enigma  of  her  double  nature.  But,  like  all  Germans,  he  did 
not  trouble  to  solve  it,  and  as  he  thought  of  the  girl  in  the 
train  he  said  quietly: 

“ She  does  not  look  like  a Frenchwoman.” 

As  if  a German  could  say  what  is  French  and  what  is 
not. 

French  or  not,  she  fllle^  his  thoughts;  for  he  woke  in  the 
middle  of  the  night  with  a pang;  he  had  just  remembered  the 
valise  on  the  seat  by  the  girl’s  side;  and  suddenly  the  idea 
that  she  had  gone  forever  crossed  his  mind.  The  idea  must 
have  come  to  him  at  the  time,  but  he  had  not  thought  of  it.  It 
filled  him  with  a strange  sadness.  He  shrugged  his  shoulders. 

“ What  does  it  matter  to  me  ? ” he  said.  “ It  is  not  my 
affair.” 

He  went  to  sleep. 

But  next  day  the  first  person  he  met  when  he  went  out  was 
Mannheim,  who  called  him  “ Bliicher,”  and  asked  him  if  he 


458 


JEAN-CHKISTOPHE 


had  made  up  his  mind  to  conquer  all  France.  From  the  gar- 
rulous newsmonger  he  learned  that  the  story  of  the  box  had  had 
a success  exceeding  all  Mannheim^s  expectations. 

Thanks  to  you ! Thanks  to  you ! cried  Mannheim.  You 
are  a great  man.  I am  nothing  compared  with  you.^^ 

^^What  have  I done?^^  said  Christophe. 

You  are  wonderful ! Mannheim  replied.  I am  jealous 
of  you.  To  shut  the  box  in  the  Griinebaums^  faces,  and  then 
to  ask  the  French  governess  instead  of  them — no,  that  takes 
the  cake ! I should  never  have  thought  of  that ! 

She  was  the  Griinebaums^  governess  ? said  Christophe  in 
amazement. 

^^Yes.  Pretend  you  don’t  know,  pretend  to  be  innocent. 
You’d  better!  . . . My  father  is  beside  himself.  The  Griine- 
baums  are  in  a rage!  ...  It  was  not  for  long:  they  have 
sacked  the  girl.” 

What ! ” cried  Christophe.  They  have  dismissed  her  ? 
Dismissed  her  because  of  me?” 

Didn’t  you  know?”  said  Mannheim.  Didn’t  she  tell 
you?” 

Christophe  was  in  despair. 

^^You  mustn’t  be  angry,  old  man,”  said  Mannheim.  ^^It 
does  not  matter.  Besides,  one  had  only  to  expect  that  the 
Griinebaums  would  find  out  . . .” 

What  ? ” cried  Christophe.  Find  out  what  ? ” 

That  she  was  your  mistress,  of  course ! ” 

But  I do  not  even  know  her.  I don’t  know  who  she  is.” 

Mannheim  smiled,  as  if  to  say: 

You  take  me  for  a fool.” 

Christophe  lost  his  temper  and  bade  Mannheim  do  him  the 
honor  of  believing  what  he  said.  Mannheim  said: 

Then  it  is  even  more  humorous.” 

Christophe  worried  about  it,  and  talked  of  going  to  the 
Griinebaums  and  telling  them  the  facts  and  justifying  the 
girl.  Mannheim  dissuaded  him. 

My  dear  fellow,”  he  said,  anything  you  may  say  will 
only  convince  them  of  the  contrary.  Besides,  it  is  too  late. 
The  girl  has  gone  away.” 

Christophe  was  utterly  sick  at  heart  and  tried  to  trace  the 


EEVOLT 


459 


young  Frenchwoman.  He  wanted  to  write  to  her  to  beg  her 
pardon.  But  nothing  was  known  of  her.  He  applied  to  the 
Grriinebaums,  but  they  snubbed  him.  They  did  not  know 
themselves  where  she  had  gone,  and  they  did  not  care.  The 
idea  of  the  harm  he  had  done  in  trying  to  do  good  tortured 
Christopher  he  was  remorseful.  But  added  to  his  remorse 
was  a mysterious  attraction,  which  shone  upon  him  from  the 
eyes  of  the  woman  who  was  gone.  Attraction  and  remorse 
both  seemed  to  be  blotted  out,  engulfed  in  the  flood  of  the 
day's  new  thoughts.  But  they  endured  in  the  depths  of  his 
heart.  Christophe  did  not  forget  the  woman  whom  he  called 
his  victim.  He  had  sworn  to  meet  her  again.  He  knew  how 
small  were  the  chances  of  his  ever  seeing  her  again:  and  he 
was  sure  that  he  would  see  her  again. 

As  for  Corinne,  she  never  answered  his  letters.  But  three 
months  later,  when  he  had  given  up  expecting  to  hear  from 
her,  he  received  a telegram  of  forty  words  of  utter  nonsense, 
in  which  she  addressed  him  in  little  familiar  terms,  and 
asked  ^^if  they  were  still  fond  of  each  other."  Then,  after 
nearly  a year's  silence,  there  came  a scrappy  letter  scrawled  in 
her  enormous  childish  zigzag  writing,  in  which  she  tried  to 
play  the  lady, — a few  affectionate,  droll  words.  And  there 
she  left  it.  She  did  not  forget  him,  but  she  had  no  time 
to  think  of  him. 

Still  under  the  spell  of  Corinne  and  full  of  the  ideas  they 
had  exchanged  about  art,  Christophe  dreamed  of  writing  the 
music  for  a play  in  which  Corinne  should  act  and  sing  a few 
^irs — a sort  of  poetic  melodrama.  That  form  of  art  once  so 
much  in  favor  in  Germany,  passionately  admired  by  Mozart, 
and  practised  by  Beethoven,  Weber,  Mendelssohn  and  Schu- 
mann, and  all  the  great  classics,  had  fallen  into  discredit 
since  the  triumph  of  Wagnerism,  which  claimed  to  have  realized 
the  deflnite  formula  of  the  theater  and  music.  The  Wagnerian 
pedants,  not  content  with  proscribing  every  new  melodrama, 
busied  themselves  with  dressing  up  the  old  melodramas  and 
operas.  They  carefully  effaced  every  trace  of  spoken  dialogue  and 
wrote  for  Mozart,  Beethoven,  or  Weber,  recitations  in  their  own 
manner ; they  were  convinced  that  they  were  doing  a service  to 


460 


JEAN-CHKISTOPHE 


the  fame  of  the  masters  and  filling  out  their  thoughts  by  the 
pious  deposit  of  their  dung  upon  masterpieces. 

Christophe,  ^ho  had  been  made  more  sensible  of  the  heavi- 
ness, and  often  the  ugliness,  of  Wagnerian  declamation  by 
Corinne,  had  for  some  time  been  debating  whether  it  was  not 
nonsense  and  an  offense  against  nature  to  harness  and  yoke 
together  the  spoken  word  and  the  word  sung  in  the  theater: 
it  was  like  harnessing  a horse  and  a bird  to  a cart.  Speech 
and  singing  each  had  its  rhythm.  It  was  comprehensible  that 
an  artist  should  sacrifice  one  of  the  two  arts  to  the  triumph 
of  that  which  he  preferred.  But  to  try  to  find  a compromise 
between  them  was  to  sacrifice  both : it  was  to  want  speech  no 
longer  to  be  speech,  and  singing  no  longer  to  be  singing;  to 
want  singing  to  let  its  vast  flood  be  confined  between  the  banks 
of  monotonous  canals,  to  want  speech  to  cloak  its  lovely  naked 
limbs  with  rich,  heavy  stuffs  which  must  paralyze  its  gestures 
and  movements.  Why  not  leave  both  with  their  spontaneity 
and  freedom  of  movement?  Like  a beautiful  girl  walking 
tranquilly,  lithely  along  a stream,  dreaming  as  she  goes:  the 
gay  murmur  of  the  water  lulls  her  dreams,  and  unconsciously 
she  brings  her  steps  and  her  thoughts  in  tune  with  the  song 
of  the  stream.  So  being  both  free,  music  and  poesy  would  go 
side  by  side,  dreaming,  their  dreams  mingling.  Assuredly  all 
music  was  not  good  for  such  a union,  nor  all  poetry.  The  oppo- 
nents of  melodrama  had  good  ground  for  attack  in  the  coarse- 
ness of  the  attempts  which  had  been  made  in  that  form,  and  of 
the  interpreters.  Christophe  had  for  long  shared  their  dis- 
like: the  stupidity  of  the  actors  who  delivered  these  recitations 
spoken  to  an  instrumental  accompaniment,  without  bothering 
about  the  accompaniment,  without  trying  to  merge  their  voices 
in  it,  rather,  on  the  contrary,  trying  to  prevent  anything  being 
heard  but  themselves,  was  calculated  to  revolt  any  musical  ear. 
But  since  he  had  tasted  the  beauty  of  Corinne’s  harmonious 
voice — ^that  liquid  and  pure  voice  which  played  upon  music 
like  a ray  of  light  on  water,  which  wedded  every  turn  of  a 
melody,  which  was  like  the  most  fluid  and  most  free  singing, — 
he  had  caught  a glimpse  of  the  beauty  of  a new  art. 

Perhaps  he  was  right,  but  he  was  still  too  inexperienced  to 
venture  without  peril  upon  a form  which — if  it  is  meant  to 


EEVOLT 


461 


be  beautiful  and  really  artistic — is  the  most  difficult  of  all. 
That  art  especially  demands  one  essential  condition,  the  per- 
fect harmony  of  the  combined  efforts  of  the  poet,  the  musicians, 
and  the  actors.  Christophe  had  no  tremors  about  it : he 
hurled  himself  blindly  at  an  unl^nown  art  of  which  the  laws 
were  only  known  to  himself. 

His  first  idea  had  been  to  clothe  in  music  a fairy  fantasy  of 
Shakespeare  or  an  act  of  the  second  part  of  Faust,  But  the 
theaters  showed  little  disposition  to  make  the  experiment.  It 
would  be  too  costly  and  appeared  absurd.  They  were  quite 
willing  to  admit  Christophers  efficiency  in  music,  but  that  he 
should  take  upon  himself  to  have  ideas  about  poetry  and  the 
theater  made  them  smile.  They  did  not  take  him  seriously. 
The  world  of  music  and  the  world  of  poesy  were  like  two  for- 
eign and  secretly  hostile  states.  Christophe  had  to  accept  the 
collaboration  of  a poet  to  be  able  to  set  foot  upon  poetic  ter- 
ritory, and  he  was  not  allowed  to  choose  his  own  poet.  He 
would  not  have  dared  to  choose  himself.  He  did  not  trust  his 
taste  in  poetry.  He  had  been  told  that  he  knew  nothing  about 
it;  and,  indeed,  he  could  not  understand  the  poetry  which  was 
admired  by  those  about  him.  With  his  usual  honesty  and 
stubbornness,  he  had  tried  hard  sometimes  to  feel  the  beauty  of 
some  of  these  works,  but  he  had  always  been  bewildered  and  a 
little  ashamed  of  himself.  No,  decidedly  he  was  not  a poet. 
In  truth,  he  loved  passionately  certain  old  poets,  and  that 
consoled  him  a little.  But  no  doubt  he  did  not  love  them  as 
they  should  be  loved.  Had  he  not  once  expressed  the  ridicu- 
lous idea  that  those  poets  only  are  great  who  remain  great  even 
when  they  are  translated  into  prose,  and  even  into  the  prose 
of  a foreign  language,  and  that  words  have  no  value  apart 
from  the  soul  which  they  express?  His  friends  had  laughed 
at  him.  Mannheim  had  called  him  a goose.  He  did  not  try 
to  defend  himself.  As  every  day  he  saw,  through  the  example 
of  writers  who  talk  of  music,  the  absurdity  of  artists  who 
attempt  to  image  any  art  other  than  their  own,  he  resigned 
himself — though  a little  incredulous  at  heart — to  his  incom- 
petence in  poetry,  and  he  shut  his  eyes  and  accepted  the  judg- 
ments of  those  whom  he  thought  were  better  informed  than 
himself.  So  he  let  his  friends  of  the  Eeview  impose  one  of 


462 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


their  number  on  him,  a great  man  of  a decadent  coterie, 
Stephen  von  Hellmuth,  who  brought  him  an  Iphigehia.  It 
was  at  the  time  when  German  poets  (like  their  colleagues  in 
France)  were  recasting  all  the  Greek  tragedies.  Stephen  von 
Hellmuth^s  work  was  one  of  those  astounding  Graeco-German 
plays  in  which  Ibsen,  Homer,  and  Oscar  Wilde  are  compounded 
— and,  of  course,  a few  manuals  of  archaeology.  Agamemnon 
was  neurasthenic  and  Achilles  impotent:  they  lamented  their 
condition  at  length,  and  naturally  their  outcries  produced  no 
change.  The  energy  of  the  drama  was  concentrated  in  the  role 
of  Iphigenia— a nervous,  hysterical,  and  pedantic  Iphigenia, 
who  lectured  the  hero,  declaimed  furiously,  laid  bare  for  the 
audience  her  Nietzschian  pessimism  and,  glutted  with  death,  cut 
her  throat,  shrieking  with  laughter. 

Nothing  could  be  more  contrary  to  Christophers  mind  than 
Such  pretentious,  degenerate,  Ostrogothic  stuff,  in  Greek  dress. 
It  was  hailed  as  a masterpiece  by  everybody  about  him.  He 
was  cowardly  and  was  overpersuaded.  In  truth,  he  was  burst- 
ing with  music  and  thinking  much  more  of  his  music  than 
of  the  text.  The  text  was  a new  bed  into  which  to  let  loose 
the  flood  of  his  passions.  He  was  as  far  as  possible  from  the 
state  of  abnegation  and  intelligent  impersonality  proper  to 
musical  translation  of  a poetic  work.  He  was  thinking  only 
of  himself  and  not  at  all  of  the  work.  He  never  thought  of 
adapting  himself  to  it.  He  was  under  an  illusion:  he  saw  in 
the  poem  something  absolutely  different  from  what  was  actually 
in  it — just  as  when  he  was  a child  he  used  to  compose  in  his 
mind  a play  entirely  different  from  that  which  was  upon  the 
stage. 

It  was  not  until  it  came  to  rehearsal  that  he  saw  the  real 
play.  One  day  he  was  listening  to  a scene,  and  he  thought  it 
so  stupid  that  he  fancied  the  actors  must  be  spoiling  it,  and 
went  so  far  as  to  explain  it  to  them  in  the  poet’s  presence;  but 
also  to  explain  it  to  the  poet  himself,  who  was  defending  his 
interpretation.  The  author  refused  bluntly  to  hear  him,  and 
said  with  some  asperity  that  he  thought  he  knew  what  he  had 
meant  to  write.  Christophe  would  not  give  in,  and  maintained 
that  Hellmuth  knew  nothing  about  it.  The  general  merriment 
told  him  that  he  was  making  himself  ridiculous.  He  said  no 


EEVOLT 


463 


more,  agreeing  that  after  all  it  was  not  he  who  had  written 
the  poem.  Then  he  saw  the  appalling  emptiness  of  the  play 
and  was  overwhelmed  by  it:  he  wondered  how  he  could  ever 
have  been  persuaded  to  try  it.  He  called  himself  an  idiot  and 
tore  his  hair.  He  tried  in  vain  to  reassure  himself  by  saying: 
“You  know  nothing  about  it;  it  is  not  your  business.  Keep 
to  your  music.”  He  was  so  much  ashamed  of  certain  idiotic 
things  in  it,  of  the  pretentious  pathos,  the  crying  falsity  of 
the  words,  the  gestures  and  attitudes,  that  sometimes,  when 
he  was  conducting  the  orchestra,  he  hardly  had  the  strength  to 
raise  his  baton.  He  wanted  to  go  and  hide  in  the  prompter  s 
box.  He  was  too  frank  and  too  little  politic  to  conceal  what 
he  thought.  Every  one  noticed  it:  his  friends,  the  actors,  and 
the  author.  Hellmuth  said  to  him  with  a f rigiT  smile : 

“Is  it  not  fortunate  enough  to  please  you?” 

Christophe  replied  honestly : ^ 

“ Truth  to  tell,  no.  I don’t  understand  it.” 

“ Then  you  did  not  read  it  when  you  set  it  to  music  ? ” 

“ Yes,”  said  Christophe  naively,  “ but  I made  a mistake.  I 
understood  it  differently.” 

“ It  is  a pity  you  did  not  write  what  you  understood  your- 
SGlf 

“ Oh ! If  only  I could  have  done  so ! ” said  Christophe. 

The  poet  was  vexed,  and  in  his  turn  criticised  the  music. 
He  complained  that  it  was  in  the  way  and  prevented  his  words 

being  heard.  , . 

If  the  poet  did  not  understand  the  musician  or  the  musician 
the  poet,  the  actors  understood  neither  the  one  nor  the  other, 
and  did  not  care.  They  were  only  asking  for  sentences  in  their 
parts  on  which  to  bring  in  their  usual  effects.  They  had  no 
idea  of  adapting  their  declamation  to  the  formality  of  the  piece 
and  the  musical  rhythm.  They  went  one  way,  the  music  an- 
other. It  was  as  though  they  were  constantly  singing  out  of 
tune.  Christophe  ground  his  teeth  and  shouted  the  note  at 
them  until  he  was  hoarse.  They  let  him  shout  and  went  on 
imperturbably,  not  even  understanding  what  he  wanted  them 
to  do. 

Christophe  would  have  flung  the  whole  thing  up  if  the  re- 
hearsals had  not  been  so  far  advanced,  and  he  had  not  been 


464 


JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 


bound  to  go  on  by  fear  of  legal  proceedings.  Mannheim,  to 
whom  he  confided  his  discouragement,  laughed  at  him; 

" What  is  it?”  he  asked.  “ It  is  all  going  well.  You  don’t 
understand  each  other?  What  does  that  matter?  Who  has 
ever  understood  his  work  but  the  author?  It  is  a toss-up 
whether  he  understands  it  himself!” 

Christophe  was  worried  about  the  stupidity  of  the  poem, 
which,  he  said,  would  ruin  the  music.  Mannheim  made  no 
difficulty  about  admitting  that  there  was  no  common  sense  in 
the  poem  and  that  Hellmuth  was  “ a muff,”  but  he  would  not 
worry  about  him : Hellmuth  gave  good  dinners  and  had  a 
pretty  wife.  What  more  did  criticism  want  ? 

Christophe  shrugged  his  shoulders  and  said  that  he  had 
no  time  to  listen  to  nonsense. 

“ It  is  not  nonsense ! ” said  Mannheim,  laughing.  “ How 
serious  people  are ! They  have  no  idea  of  what  matters  in 
life.” 

And  he  advised  Christophe  not  to  bother  so  much  about  Hell- 
muth’s  business,  but  to  attend  to  his  own.  He  wanted  him 
to  advertise  a little.  Christophe  refused  indignantly.  To  a 
reporter  who  came  and  asked  for  a history  of  his  life,  he 
replied  furiously : 

“ It  is  not  your  affair ! ” * 

And  when  they  asked  for  his  photograph  for  a review,  he 
stamped  with  rage  and  shouted  that  he  was  not,  thank  God! 
an  emperor,  to  have  his  face  passed  from  hand  to  hand.  It 
was  impossible  to  bring  him  into  touch  with  influential  people. 
He  never  replied  to  invitations,  and  when  he  had  been  forced 
by  any  chance  to  accept,  he  would  forget  to  go  or  would  go 
with  such  a bad  grace  that  he  seemed  to  have  set  himself  to 
be  disagreeable  to  everybody. 

But  the  climax  came  when  he  quarreled  with  his  review,  two 
days  before  the  performance. 

The  thing  was  bound  to  happen.  Mannheim  had  gone  on 
revising  Christophers  articles,  and  he  no  longer  scrupled  about 
deleting  whole  lines  of  criticism  and  replacing  them  with  com- 
pliments. 

One  day,  out  visiting,  Christophe  met  a certain  virtuoso — a 


EEVOLT 


465 


foppish  pianist  whom  he  had  slaughtered.  The  man  came  and 
thanked  him  with  a smile  that  showed  all  his  white  teeth.  He 
replied  brutally  that  there  was  no  reason  for  it.  The  other 
insisted  and  poured  forth  e.xpressions  of  gratitude.  Christophe 
cut  him  short  by  saying  that  if  he  was  satisfied  with  the  article 
that  was  his  affair,  but  that  the  article  had  certainly  not  been 
written  with  a view  to  pleasing  him.  And  he  turned  his  back 
on  him.  The  virtuoso  thought  him  a kindly  boor  and  went 
away  laughing.  But  Christophe  remembered  having  received  a 
card  of  thanks  from  another  of  his  victims,  and  a suspicion 
flashed  upon  him.  He  went  out,  bought  the  last  number  of  the 
Eeview  at  a news-stand,  turned  to  his  article,  and  read  . . . 
At  first  he  wondered  if  he  were  going  mad.  Then  he  under- 
stood, and,  mad  with  rage,  he  ran  to  the  office  of  the  Dionysos. 

Waldhaus  and  Mannheim  were  there,  talking  to  an  actress 
whom  they  knew.  They  had  no  need  to  ask  Christophe  what 
brought  him.  Throwing  a number  of  the  Eeview  on  the  table, 
Christophe  let  fly  at  them  without  stopping  to  take  breath,  with 
extraordinary  violence,  shouting,  calling  them  rogues,  rascals, 
forgers,  thumping  on  the  floor  with  a chair.  Mannheim  began 
to  laugh.  Christophe  tried  to  kick  him.  Mannheim  took 
refuge  behind  the  table  and  rolled  with  laughter.  But  Wald- 
haus took  it  very  loftily.  With  dignity,  formally,  he  tried  to 
make  himself  heard  through  the  row,  and  said  that  he  would 
not  allow  any  one  to  talk  to  him  in  such  a tone,  that  Christophe- 
should  hear  from  him,  and  he  held  out  his  card.  Christophe 
flung  it  in  his  face. 

“ Mischief-maker ! — I don’t  need  your  card  to  know  what 
you  are.  . . . You  are  a rascal  and  a forger!  . . . And  you 
think  I would  fight  with  you  ...  a thrashing  is  all  you  de- 
serve! . . .” 

His  voice  could  be  heard  in  the  street.  People  stopped  to 
listen.  Mannheim  closed  the  windows.  The  actress  tried  to 
escape,  but  Christophe  was  blocking  the  way.  Waldhaus  was 
pale  and  choking.  Mannheim  was  stuttering  and  stammering 
and  trying  to  reply.  Christophe  did  not  let  them  speak.  He  let 
loose  upon  them  every  expression  he  could  think  of,  and  never 
stopped  until  he  was  out  of  breath  and  had  come  to  an  end  of 
his  insults.  Waldhaus  and  Mannheim  only  found  their  tongues 


466 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


after  he  had  gone.  Mannheiln  quickly  recovered  himself: 
insults  slipped  from  him  like  water  from  a duck's  back.  But 
Waldhaus  was  still  sore:  his  dignity  had  been  outraged,  and 
what  made  the  affront  more  mortifying  was  that  there  had  been 
witnesses.  He  would  never  forgive  it.  His  colleagues  joined 
chorus  with  him.  Mannheim  only  of  the  staff  of  the  Eeview 
was  not  angry  with  Christophe.  He  had  had  his  fill  of  enter- 
tainment out  of  him : it  did  not  seem  to  him  a heavy  price 
to  pay  for  his  pound  of  flesh,  to  suffer  a few  violent  words.  It 
had  been  a good  joke.  If  he  had  been  the  butt  of  it  he  would 
have  been  the  first  to  laugh.  And  so  he  was  quite  ready 
to  shake  hands  with  Christophe  as  though  nothing  had  hap- 
pened. But  Christophe  was  more  rancorous  and  rejected  all 
advances.  Mannheim  did  not  care.  Christophe  was  a toy 
from  which  he  had  extracted  all  |;he  amusement  possible.  He 
was  beginning  to  want  a new  puppet.  From  that  very  day  all 
was  over  between  them.  But  that  did  not  prevent  Mannheim 
still  saying,  whenever  Christophe  was  mentioned  in  his  pres- 
ence, that  they  were  intimate  friends.  And  perhaps  he  thought 
they  were.  ^ 

Two  days  after  the  quarrel  the  first  performance  of  Iphi-  ? 
genia  took  place.  It  was  an  utter  failure.  Waldhaus’  review  • 
praised  the  poem  and  made  no  mention  of  the  music.  The 
other  papers  and  reviews  made  merry  over  it.  They  laughed 
and  hissed.  The  piece  was  withdrawn  after  the  third  perform-  ; 
ance,  but  the  jokes  at  its  expense  did  not  disappear  so  quickly.  < 
People  were  only  too  glad  of  the  opportunity  of  having  a fling  | 
at  Christophe,  and  for  several  weeks  the  Iphigenia  remained  \ 
an  unfailing  subject  for  joking.  They  knew  that  Christophe  ^ 
had  no  weapon  of  defense,  and  they  took  advantage  of  it.  The  i 
only  thing  which  held  them  back  a little  was  his  position  at 
the  Court.  Although  his  relation  with  the  Grand  Duke  had 
become  quite  cold,  for  the  Prince  had  several  times  made  re- 
marks to  which  he  had  paid  no  attention  whatever,  he  still 
went  to  the  Palace  at  intervals,  and  still  enjoyed,  in  the  eye 
of  the  public,  a sort  of  official  protection,  though  it  was  more 
visionary  than  real.  He  took  upon  himself  to  destroy  even 
that  last  support. 


EEVOLT 


467 


He  suffered  from  the  criticisms.  They  were  concerned 
not  only  with  his  music,  but  also  with  his  idea  of  a new 
form  of  art,  which  the  writers  did  not  take  the  trouble 
to  understand.  It  was  very  easy  to  travesty  it  and  make 
fun  of  it.  Christophe  was  not  yet  wise  enough  to  know  that 
the  best  reply  to  dishonest  critics  is  to  make  none  and  to  go 
on  working.  For  some  months  past  he  had  fallen  into  the 
bad  habit  of  not  letting  any  unjust  attack  go  unanswered.  He 
wrote  an  article  in  which  he  did  not  spare  certain  of  his  adver- 
saries. The  two  papers  to  which  he  took  it  returned  it  with 
ironically  polite  excuses  for  being  unable  to  publish  it.  Chris- 
tophe stuck  to  his  guns.  He  remembered  that  the  socialist 
paper  in  the  town  had  made  advances  to  him.  He  knew  one 
of  the  editors.  They  used  to  meet  and  talk  occasionally.  Chris- 
tophe was  glad  to  find  some  one  who  would  talk  freely  about 
power,  the  army  and  oppression  and  archaic  prejudices.  But 
they  could  not  go  far  with  each  other,  for  the  socialist  always 
came  back  to  Karl  Marx,  about  whom  Christophe  cared'  not  a 
rap.  Moreover,  Christophe  used  to  find  in  his  speeches  about  the 
free  man — besides  a materialism  which  was  not  much  to  his 
taste — a pedantic  severity  and  a despotism  of  thought,  a secret 
cult  of  force,  an  inverse  militarism,  all  of  which  did  not  sound 
very  different  from  what  he  heard  every  day  in  German. 

However,  he  thought  of  this  man  and  his  paper  when  he 
saw  all  other  doors  in  journalism  closed  to  him.  He  knew  that 
his  doing  so  would  cause  a scandal.  The  paper  was  violent, 
malignant,  and  always  being  condemned.  But  as  Christophe 
never  read  it,  he  only  thought  of  the  boldness  of  its  ideas,  of 
which  he  was  not  afraid,  and  not  of  the  baseness  of  its  tone, 
which  would  have  repelled  him.  Besides,  he  was  so  angry  at 
seeing  the  other  papers  in  alliance  to  suppress  him  that  perhaps 
he  would  have  gone  on  even  if  he  had  been  warned.  He  wanted 
to  show  people  that  he  was  not  so  easily  got  rid  of.  So  he 
took  his  article  to  the  socialist  paper,  which  received  it  with 
open  arms.  The  next  day  the  article  appeared,  and  the  paper 
announced  in  large  letters  that  it  had  engaged  the  support  of 
the  young  and  talented  maestro,  Jean-Christophe  Krafft,  whose 
keen  sympathy  with  the  demands  of  the  working  classes  was 
well  known. 


468 


J^AN-CHEISTOPHE 


Christophe  read  neither  the  note  nor  the  article,  for  he  had 
gone  out  before  dawn  for  a walk  in  the  country,  it  being  Sun- 
day. He  was  in  fine  fettle.  As  he  saw  the  sun  rise  he  shouted,  | 
laughed,  yodeled,  leaped,  and  danced.  No  more  review,  no  | 
more  criticisms  to  do ! It  was  spring  and  there  was  once  more 
the  music  of  the  heavens  and  the  earth,  the  most  beautiful  of 
all.  No  more  dark  concert  rooms,  stuffy  and  smelly,  unpleas- 
ant people,  dull  performers.  Now  the  marvelous  song  of  the 
murmuring  forests  was  to  be  heard,  and  over  the  fields  like 
waves  there  passed  the  intoxicating  scents  of  life,  breaking 
through  the  crust  of  the  earth  and  issuing  from  the  grave. 

He  went  home  with  his  head  buzzing  with  light  and  music, 
and  his  mother  gave  him  a letter  which  had  been  brought  from 
the  Palace  while  he  was  away.  The  letter  was  in  an  imper- 
sonal form,  and  told  Herr  Krafft  that  he  was  to  go  to  the 
Palace  that  morning.  The  morning  was  past,  it  was  nearly  - 
one  o’clock.  Christophe  was  not  put  about. 

It  is  too  late  now,”  he  said.  It  will  do  to-morrow.”  ; 
But  his  mother  said  anxiously:  * 

No,  no.  You  cannot  put  off  an  appointment  with  His 
Highness  like  that:  you  must  go  at  once.  Perhaps  it  is  a | 
matter  of  importance.”  ? 

Christophe  shrugged  his  shoulders.  ; 

Important!  As  if  those  people  could  have  anything  im-  ■ 
portant  to  say ! . . . He  wants  to  tell  me  his  ideas  about  music.  , 
That  will  be  funny ! . . . If  only  he  has  not  taken  it  into  his  • 
head  to  rival  Siegfried  MeyeP  and  wants  to  show  me  a ] 
Hymn  to  Aegis!  I vow  that  I will  not  spare  him.  I shall  say:  \ 
^ Stick  to  politics.  You  are  master  there.  You  will  always  be  ‘ 
right.  But  beware  of  art ! In  art  you  are  seen  without  your  ! 
plumes,  your  helmet,  your  uniform,  your  money,  your  titles, 
your  ancestors,  your  policemen — and  just  think  for  a moment 
what  will  be  left  of  you  then ! ’ ” 

Poor  Louisa  took  him  quite  seriously  and  raised  her  hands 
in  horror. 

You  won’t  say  that ! . . . You  are  mad ! Mad ! ” 

It  amused  him  to  make  her  uneasy  by  playing  upon  her 

nickname  given  by  German  pamphleteers  to  H.  M.  (His  Ma- 
jesty) the  Emperor. 


EEVOLT 


469 


credulity  until  he  became  so  extravagant  that  Louisa  began 
to  see  that  he  was  making  fun  of  her. 

You  are  stupid,  my  boy ! 

He  laughed  and  kissed  her.  He  was  in  a wonderfully  good 
humor.  On  his  walk  he  had  found  a beautiful  musical  theme, 
and  he  felt  it  frolicking  in  him  like  a fish  in  water.  He  re- 
fused to  go  to  the  Palace  until  he  had  had  something  to  eat. 
He  was  as  hungry  as  an  ape.  Louisa  then  supervised  his  dress- 
ing, for  he  was  beginning  to  tease  her  again,  pretending  that 
he  was  quite  all  right  as  he  was  with  his  old  clothes  and  dusty 
boots.  But  he  changed  them  all  the  same,  and  cleaned  his 
boots,  whistling  like  a blackbird  and  imitating  all  the  instru- 
ments in  an  orchestra.  When  he  had  finished  his  mother  in- 
spected him  and  gravely  tied  his  tie  for  him  again.  For  once 
in  a way  he  was  very  patient,  because  he  was  pleased  with  him- 
self— which  was  not  very  usual.  He  went  off  saying  that  he 
was  going  to  elope  with  Princess  Adelaide — ^the  Grand  Duke’s 
daughter,  quite  a pretty  woman,  who  was  married  to  a German 
princeling  and  had  come  to  stay  with  her  parents  for  a few 
weeks.  She  had  shown  sympathy  for  Christophe  when  he  was 
a child,  and  he  had  a soft  side  for  her.  Louisa  used  to  declare 
that  he  was  in  love  with  her,  and  he  would  pretend  to  be  so  in 
fun. 

He  did  not  hurry ; he  dawdled  and  looked  into  the  shops,  and 
stopped  to  pat  some  dog  that  he  knew  as  it  lay  on  its  side  and 
yawned  in  the  sun.  He  jumped  over  the  harmless  railings 
which  inclosed  the  Palace  square — a great  empty  square,  sur- 
rounded with  houses,  with  two  little  fountains,  two  symmetrical 
bare  flower-beds,  divided,  as  by  a parting,  by  a gravel  path, 
carefully  raked  and  bordered  by  orange  trees  in  tubs.  In  the 
middle  was  the  bronze  statue  of  some  unknown  Grand  Duke  in 
the  costume  of  Louis  Philippe,  on  a pediment  adorned  at  the 
four  corners  by  allegorical  figures  representing  the  Virtues. 
On  a seat  one  solitary  man  was  dozing  over  his  paper.  Behind 
the  silly  moat  of  the  earthworks  of  the  Palace  two  sleepy  cannon 
1 yawned  upon  the  sleepy  town.  Christophe  laughed  at  the 
whole  thing. 

He  entered  the  Palace  without  troubling  to  take  on  a more 
I official  manner.  At  most  he  stopped  humming,  but  his  thoughts 


470 


JEAN-CHKISTOPHE 


went  dancing  on  inside  him.  He  threw  his  hat  on  the  table 
in  the  hall  and  familiarly  greeted  the  old  nsher,  whom  he  had  I 
known  since  he  was  a child.  (The  old  man  had  been  there  ■ 
on  the  day  when  Christophe  had  first  entered  the  Palace,  on  the 
evening  when  he  had  seen  Hassler.)  But  to-day  the  old  man, 
who  always  used  to  reply  good-humoredly  to  Christophers  dis- 
respectful sallies,  now  seemed  a little  haughty.  Christophe 
paid  no  heed  to  it.  A little  farther  on,  in  the  ante-chamber,  he 
met  a clerk  of  the  chancery,  who  was  usually  full  of  conver- 
sation and  very  friendly.  He  was  surprised  to  see  him  hurry 
past  him  to  avoid  having  to  talk.  However,  he  did  not  attach 
any  significance  to  it,  and  went  on  and  asked  to  be  shown  in. 

He  went  in.  They  had  just  finished  dinner.  His  Highness 
was  in  one  of  the  drawing-rooms.  He  was  leaning  against  the 
mantelpiece,  smoking,  and  talking  to  his  guests,  among  whom  ^ 
Christophe  saw  his  princess,  who  was  also  smoking.  She  was 
lying  back  in  an  armchair  and  talking  in  a loud  voice  to  some  ' 
officers  who  made  a circle  about  her.  The  gathering  was  lively.  ; 
They  were  all  very  merry,  and  when  Christophe  entered  he 
heard  the  Grand  Duke’s  thick  laugh.  But  he  stopped  dead  t 
when  he  saw  Christophe.  He  growled  and  pounced  on  him.  J 
^^Ah!  There  you  are!”  he  said.  ^^You  have  condescended  , 
to  come  at  last?  Do  you  think  you  can  go  on  making  fun  of  : 
me  any  longer?  You’re  a blackguard,  sir!” 

Christophe  was  so  staggered  by  this  brutal  attack  that  it  ! 
was  some  time  before  he  could  utter  a word.  He  was  thinking  ? 
that  he  was  only  late,  and  that  that  could  not  have  provoked  \ 
such  violence.  He  murmured:  ; 

What  have  I done.  Your  Highness?  ” « 

His  Highness  did  not  listen  and  went  on  angrily : ‘ 

Be  silent ! I will  not  be  insulted  by  a blackguard ! ” Chris- 
tophe turned  pale,  and  gulped  so  as  to  try  to  speak,  for  he 
was  choking.  He  made  an  effort,  and  said: 

^^Your  Highness,  you  have  no  right — you  have  no  right  to 
insult  me  without  telling  me  what  I have  done.”  ^ 

The  Grand  Duke  turned  to  his  secretary,  who  produced  a 
paper  from  his  pocket  and  held  it  out  to  him.  He  was  in  such 
a state  of  exasperation  as  could  not  be  explained  only  by  his  i 
anger : the  fumes  of  good  wine  had  their  share  in  it,  too.  He  ^ 


EEVOLT 


471 


lame  and  stood  in  front  of  Christophe,  and  like  a toreador  with 
lis  cape,  furiously  waved  the  crumpled  newspaper  in  his  face 
ind  shouted : 

“Your  muck,  sir!  . . . You  deserve  to  have  your  nose 
•ubbed  in  it  I ” 

Christophe  recognized  the  socialist  paper. 

“ I don’t  see  what  harm  there  is  in  it,”  he  said. 

" What ! What ! ” screamed  the  Grand  Duke.  “ You  are  im- 
mdent!  . . . This  rascally  paper,  which  insults  me  from  day 
;o  day,  and  spews  out  filthy  insults  upon  me ! . . .” 

“ Sire,”  said  Christophe,  “ I have  not  read  it.” 

You  lie ! ” shouted  the  Grand  Duke. 

“ You  shall  not  call  me  a liar,”  said  Christophe.  “ I have 
lot  read  it.  I am  only  concerned  with  reviews,  and  besides,  I 
lave  the  right  to  write  in  whatever  paper  I like.” 

“You  have  no  right  but  to  hold  your  tongue.  I have  been 
too  kind  to  you.  I have  heaped  kindness  upon  you,  you  and 
yours,  in  spite  of  your  misconduct  and  your  father’s,  which 
would  have  justified  me  in  cutting  you  off.  I forbid  you  to 
50  on  writing  in  a paper  which  is  hostile  to  me.  And  further ; 
I forbid  you  altogether  to  write  anything  in  future  without  my 
authority.  I have  had  enough  of  your  musical  polemics.  I 
will  not  allow  any  one  who  enjoys  my  patronage  to  spend  his 
time  in  attacking  everything  which  is  dear  to  people  of  taste 
and  feeling,  to  all  true  Germans.  You  would  do  better  to 
write  better  music,  or  if  that  is  impossible,  to  practise  your 
scales  and  exercises.  I don’t  want  to  have  anything  to  do  with  a 
musical  Bebel  who  amuses  himself  by  decrying  all  our  national 
glories  and  upsetting  the  minds  of  the  people.  We  know  what 
is  good,  thank  God.  We  do  not  need  to  wait  for  you  to  tell 
us.  Go  to  your  piano,  sir,  or  leave  us  in  peace ! ” 

Standing  face  to  face  with  Christophe  the  fat  man  glared 
at  him  insultingly.  Christophe  was  livid,  and  tried  to  speak. 
His  lips  moved ; he  stammered ; 

“ I am  not  your  slave.  I shall  say  what  I like  and  write 
what  I like  ...” 

He  choked.  He  was  almost  weeping  with  shame  and  rage. 
iHis  legs  were  trembling.  He  jerked  his  elbow  and  upset  an 
ornament  on  a table  by  his  side.  He  felt  that  he  was  in  a 


472 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


ridiculous  position.  He  heard  people  laughing.  He  looked 
down  the  room,  and  as  through  a mist  saw  the  princess  watch- 
ing the  scene  and  exchanging  ironically  commiserating  remarks 
with  her  neighbors.  He  lost  count  of  what  exactly  happened. 
The  Grand  Duke  shouted.  Christophe  shouted  louder  than  he 
without  knowing  what  he  said.  The  Prince’s  secretary  and 
another  official  came  towards  him  and  tried  to  stop  him.  He 
pushed  them  away,  and  while  he  talked  he  waved  an  ash-tray 
which  he  had  mechanically  picked  up  from  the  table  against 
which  he  was  leaning.  He  heard  the  secretary  say : 

Put  it  down ! Put  it  down ! ” 

And  he  heard  himsdf  shouting  inarticulately  and  knocking 
on  the  edge  of  the  table  with  the  ash-tray. 

Go ! ” roared  the  Grand  Duke,  beside  himself  with  rage. 
Go ! Go ! I’ll  have  you  thrown  out ! ” 

The  officers  had  come  up  to  the  Prince  and  were  trying  to  ' 
calm  him.  The  Grand  Duke  looked  apoplectic.  His  eyes  were-; 
starting  from  his  head,  he  shouted  to  them  to  throw  the  rascal  ; 
out.  Christophe  saw  red.  He  longed  to  thrust  his  fist  in  the  5 
Grand  Duke’s  face ; but  he  was  crushed  under  a weight  of  con- 
fiicting  feelings : shame,  fury,  a remnant  of  shyness,  of  German  , 
loyalty,  traditional  respect,  habits  of  humility  in  the  Prince’s  ^ 
presence.  He  tried  to  speak ; he  could  not.  He  tried  to  move ; ; 
he  could  not.  He  could  not  see  or  hear.  He  suffered  them 
to  push  him  along  and  left  the  room.  . 

He  passed  through  the  impassive  servants  who  had  come  up  ; 
to  the  door,  and  had  missed  nothing  of  the  quarrel.  He  had  i 
to  go  thirty  yards  to  cross  the  ante-chamber,  and  it  seemed  a ^ 
lifetime.  The  corridor  grew  longer  and  longer  as  he  walked  ; 
up  it.  He  would  never  get  out ! . . . The  light  of  day  which  ; 
he  saw  shining  downstairs  through  the  glass  door  was  his 
haven.  He  went  stumbling  down  the  stairs.  He  forgot  that 
he  was  bareheaded.  The  old  usher  reminded  him  to  take  his 
hat.  He  had  to  gather  all  his  forces  to  leave  the  castle,  cross 
the  court,  reach  his  home.  His  teeth  were  chattering  when  he 
opened  the  door.  His  mother  was  terrified  by  his  face  and  his 
trembling.  He  avoided  her  and  refused  to  answer  her  ques- 
tions. He  went  up  to  his  room,  shut  himself  in,  and  lay  down. 
He  was  shaking  so  that  he  could  not  undress.  His  breathing 


KEVOLT 


47a 


came  in  jerks  and  his  whole  body  seemed  shattered.  . . . Oh ! 
If  only  he  could  see  no  more,  feel  no  more,  no  longer  have 
to  bear  with  his  wretched  body,  no  longer  have  to  struggle 
against  ignoble  life,  and  fall,  fall,  breathless,  without  thought, 
and  no  longer  be  anywhere!  ...  With  frightful  difficulty 
he  tore  off  his  clothes  and  left  them  on  the  ground,  and 
then  flung  himself  into  his  bed  and  drew  the  coverings  over 
him.  There  was  no  sound  in  the  room  save  that  of  the  little 
iron  be^4  rattling  on  the  tiled  floor. 

Louisa  listened  at  the  door.  She  knocked  in  vain.  She  called 
softly.  There  was  no  reply.  She  waited,  anxiously  listening; 
through  the  silence.  Then  she  went  away.  Once  or  twice 
during  the  day  she  came  and  listened,  and  again  at  night,  before 
she  went  to  bed.  Day  passed,  and  the  night.  The  house  was 
still.  Christophe  was  shaking  with  fever.  Every  now  and 
then  he  wept,  and  in  the  night  he  got  up  several  times  and 
shook  his  fist  at  the  wall.  About  two  o’clock,  in  an  access  of 
madness,  he  got  up  from  his  bed,  sweating  and  half  naked.  He 
wanted  to  go  and  kill  the  Grand  Duke.  He  was  devoured  by 
hate  and  shame.  His  body  and  his  heart  writhed  in  the  fire  of 
it.  Nothing  of  all  the  storm  in  him  could  be  heard  outside; 
not  a word,  not  a sound.  With  clenched  teeth  he  fought  it 
down  and  forced  it  back  into  himself. 

Next  morning  he  came  down  as  usual.  He  was  a wreck.  He 
said  nothing  and  his  mother  dared  not  question  him.  She* 
knew,  from  the  gossip  of  the  neighborhood.  All  day  he  stayed 
sitting  by  the  fire,  silent,  feverish,  and  with  bent  head,  like  a 
little  old  man.  And  when  he  was  alone  he  wept  in  silence. 

In  the'  evening  the  editor  of  the  socialist  paper  came  to  see 
him.  Naturally  he  had  heard  and  wished  to  have  details. 
Christophe  was  touched  by  his  coming,  and  interpreted  it 
naively  as  a mark  of  sympathy  and  a desire  for  forgiveness 
on  the  part  of  those  who  had  compromised  him.  He  made  a 
point  of  seeming  to  regret  nothing  and  he  let  himself  go  and 
said  everything  that  was  rankling  in  him.  It  was  some  solace 
for  him  to  talk  freely  to  a man  who  shared  his  hatred  of  oppres- 
sion. The  other  urged  him  on.  He  saw  a good  chance  for  his 
journal  in  the  event,  and  an  opportunity  for  a scandalous  ar* 


474 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


tide,  for  which  he  expected  Christophe  to  provide  him  with 
material  if  he  did  not  write  it  himself  j for  he  thought  that 
after  such  an  explosion  the  Court  musician  would  put  his  very 
considerable  political  talents  and  his  no  less  considerable  little 
tit-bits  of  secret  information  about  the  Court  at  the  service 
of  “the  cause.”  As  he  did  not  plume  himself  on  his  subtlety 
he  presented  the  thing  rawly  in  the  crudest  light.  Christophe 
started.  He  declared  that  he  would  write  nothing  and  said  that 
any  attack  on  the  Grand  Duke  that  he  might  make  would  be 
interpreted  as  an  act  of  personal  vengeance,  and  that  he  would 
be  more  reserved  now  that  he  was  free  than  when,  not  being 
free,  he  ran  some  risk  in  saying  what  he  thought.  The  journal- 
ist could  not  understand  his  scruples.  He  thought  Christophe 
narrow  and  clerical  at  heart,  but  he  also  decided  that  Christophe 
was  afraid.  He  said: 

“Oh,  well!  Leave  it  to  us.  I will  write  it  myself.  You 
need  not  bother  about  it.” 

Christophe  begged  him  to  say  nothing,  but  he  had  no  means 
of  restraining  him.  Besides,  the  journalist  declared  that  the 
affair  was  not  his  concern  only:  the  insult  touched  the  paper, 
which  had  the  right  to  avenge  itself.  There  was  nothing  to  be 
said  to  that.  All  that  Christophe  could  do  was  to  ask  him  on 
his  word  of  honor  not  to  abuse  certain  of  his  confidences  which 
had  been  made  to  his  friend  and  not  to  the  journalist.  The 
other  made  no  difficulty  about  that.  Christophe  was  not  reas- 
sured by  it.  He  knew  too  well  how  imprudent  he  had  been. 
When  he  was  left  alone  he  turned  over  everything  that  he  hacj 
said,  and  shuddered.  Without  hesitating  for  a moment,  h^ 
wrote  to  the  journalist  imploring  him  once  more  not  to  repeat 
what  he  had  confided  to  him.  (The  poor  wretch  repeated  ii 
in  part  himself  in  the  letter.) 

Next  day,  as  he  opened  the  paper  with  feverish  haste,  the 
first  thing  he  read  was  his  story  at  great  length  on  the  front 
page.  Everything  that  he  had  said  on  the  evening  before  was 
immeasurably  enlarged,  having  suffered  that  peculiar  deforma- 
tion which  everything  has  to  suffer  in  its  passage  through  the 
mind  of  a journalist.  The  article  attacked  the  Grand  Duke 
and  the  Court  with  low  invective.  Certain  details  which  it 
gave  were  too  personal  to  Christophe,  too  obviously  known  onlj 


EEVOLT 


475- 


) him,  for  the  article  not  to  be  attributed  to  him  in  its  en- 
rety. 

Christophe  was  crushed  by  this  fresh  blow,  xis  he  read  a 
old  sweat  came  out  on  his  face.  When  he  had  finished  he  was 
umfounded.  He  wanted  to  rush  to  the  office  of  the  paper, 
ut  his  mother  withheld  him,  not  unreasonably  being  fearful  of 
is  violence.  He  was  afraid  of  it  himself.  He  felt  that  if  he 
'ent  there  he  would  do  something  foolish;  and  he  stayed — -and 
id  a very  foolish  thing.  He  wrote  an  indignant  letter  to  the 
ournalist  in  which  he  reproached  him  for  his  conduct  in  insult- 
ig  terms,  disclaimed  the  article,  and  broke  with  the  party, 
’he  disclaimer  did  not  appear. 

Christophe  wrote  again  to  the  paper,  demanding  that  his 
;tter  should  be  published.  They  sent  him  a copy  of  his  first  , 
jtter,  written  on  the  night  of  the  interview  and  confirming  it. 
’hey  asked  if  they  were  to  publish  that,  too.  He  felt  that  he 
ras  in  their  hands.  Thereupon  he  unfortunately  met  the  indis- 
reet  interviewer  in  the  street.  He  could  not  help  telling  him  of 
lis  contempt  for  him.  Next  day  the  paper,  without  a spark  of 
hame,  published  an  insulting  paragraph  about  the  servants  of 
he  Court,  who  even  when  they  are  dismissed  remain  servants 
,nd  are  incapable  of  being  free.  A few  allusions  to  recent 
vents  left  no  room  for  doubt  that  Christophe  was  meant. 

When  it  became  evident  to  everybody  that  Christophe  had 
10  single  support,  there  suddenly  cropped  up  a host  of  enemies 
vhose  existence  he  had  never  suspected.  All  those  whom  he- 
lad  offended,  directly  or  indirectly,  either  by  personal  criticism 
)r  by  attacking  their  ideas  and  taste,  now  took  the  offensive 
ind  avenged  themselves  with  interest.  The  general  public 
vhom  Christophe  had  tried  to  shake  out  of  their  apathy  were 
juite  pleased  to  see  the  insolent  young  man,  who  had  pre- 
lumed  to  reform  opinion  and  disturb  the  rest  of  people  of 
moperty,  taken  down  a peg.  Christophe  was  in  the  water. 
Sverybody  did  their  best  to  duck  him. 

They  did  not  come  down  upon  him  all  at  once.  One  tried’ 
irst,  to  spy  out  the  land.  Christophe  made  no  response,  and 
le  struck  more  lustily.  Others  followed,  and  then  the  whole- 
rang  of  them.  Some  joined  in  the  sport  simply  for  fun,  like 


476 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


puppies  who  think  it  funny  to  leave  their  mark  in  inappropriate  i 
places.  They  were  the  flying  squadron  of  incompetent  journal- 
ists, who,  knowing  nothing,  try  to  hide  their  ignorance  by  be- 
lauding the  victors  and  belaboring  the  vanquished.  Others 
brought  the  weight  of  their  principles  and  they  shouted  like 
•deaf  people.  Nothing  was  left  of  anything  when  they  had 
passed.  They  were  the  critics — with  the  criticism  which  kills. 

Fortunately  for  Christophe,  he  did  not  read  the  papers.  A 
few  devoted  friends  took  care  to  send  him  the  most  insulting. 
But  he  left  them  in  a heap  on  his  desk  and  never  thought  of 
opening  them.  It  was  only  towards  the  end  of  it  that  his  eyes 
were  attracted  by  a great  red  mark  round  an  article.  He 
read  that  his  Lieder  were  like  the  roaring  of  a wild  beast ; that 
his  symphonies  seemed  to  have  come  from  a madhouse;  that 
his  art  was  hysterical,  his  harmony  spasmodic,  as  a change 
from  the  dryness  of  his  heart  and  the  emptiness  of  his  thought. 
The  critic,  who  was  well  known,  ended  with  these  words: 

“Herr  Kraflt  as  a journalist  has  lately  given  astounding; 
proof  of  his  style  and  taste,  which  roused  irresistible  merriment  5 
in  musical  circles.  He  was  then  given  the  friendly  advice, 
rather  to  devote  himself  to  composition.  But  the  latest  products  f 
of  his  muse  have  shown  that  this  advice,  though  well-meant, 
was  bad.  Herr  Krafft  should  certainly  devote  himself  to  jour- 
nalism.” 

After  reading  the  article,  which  prevented  Christophe  work-; 
ing  the  whole  morning,  naturally  he  began  to  look  for  the  other, 
hostile  papers,  and  became  utterly  demoralized.  But  Louisa,) 
who  had  a mania  for  moving  everything  lying  about,  by  way'] 
of  “ tidying  up,”  had  already  burned  them.  He  was  irritated  at* 
first  and  then  comforted,  and  he  held  out  the  last  of  the- 
papers  to  her,  and  said  that  she  had  better  do  the  same  with 
that. 

Other  rebuffs  hurt  him  more.  A quartette  which  he  had 
sent  in  manuscript  to  a well-known  society  at  Frankfort  was 
rejected  unanimously  and  returned  without  explanation.  An 
overture  which  an  orchestra  at  Cologne  seemed  disposed  to  per- 
form was  returned  after  a month  as  unplayable.  But  the  worst 
of  all  was  inflicted  on  him  by  an  orchestral  society  in  the  town. 
The  Kapellmeister,  H.  Euphrat,  its  conductor,  was  quite  a 


EEVOLT 


477 


good  musician,  but  like  many  conductors,  he  had  no  curiosity 
of  mind.  He  suffered  (or  rather  he  carried  to  extremes)  the 
laziness  peculiar  to  his  class,  which  consists  in  going  on  and 
on  investigating  familiar  works,  while  it  shuns  any  really  new 
work  like  the  plague.  He  was  never  tired  of  organizing  Beetho- 
ven, Mozart,  or  Schumann  festivals : in  conducting  these  works 
he  had  only  to  let  himself  be  carried  along  by  the  purring  of 
the  familiar  rhythms.  On  the  other  hand,  contemporary  music 
was  intolerable  to  him.  He  dared  not  admit  it  and  pretended 
to  be  friendly  towards  young  talent;  in  fact,  whenever  he  was 
brought  a work  built  on  the  old  lines — a sort  of  hotch-potch  of 
works  that  had  been  new  fifty  years  before — he  would  receive 
it  very  well,  and  would  even  produce  it  ostentatiously  and  force  it 
apon  the  public.  It  did  not  disturb  either  his  effects  or  the  way 
in  which  the  public  was  accustomed  to  be  moved.  On  the  other 
band,  he  was  filled  with  a mixture  of  contempt  and  hatred  for 
anything  which  threatened  to  disturb  that  arrangement  and 
put  him  to  extra  trouble.  Contempt  would  predominate  if 
the  innovator  had  no  chance  of  emerging  from  obscurity.  But 
if  there  were  any  danger  of  his  succeeding,  then  hatred  would 
predominate — of  course  until  the  moment  when  he  had  gained 
an  established  success. 

Christophe  was  not  yet  in  that  position:  far  from  it.  And 
30  he  was  much  surprised  when  he  was  informed,  by  indirect 
Dvertures,  that  Herr  H.  Euphrat  would  be  very  glad  to  pro- 
duce one  of  his  compositions.  It  was  all  the  more  unex- 
pected as  he  knew  that  the  Kapellmeister  was  an  intimate  friend 
3f  Brahms  and  others  whom  he  had  maltreated  in  his  criticisms. 
Being  honest  himself,  he  credited  his  adversaries  with  the 
same  generous  feelings  which  he  would  have  had  himself.  He 
supposed  that  now  that  he  was  down  they  wished  to  show  him 
:hat  they  were  above  petty  spite.  He  was  touched  by  it.  He 
wrote  effusively  to  Herr  Euphrat  and  sent  him  a symphonic 
ooem.  The  conductor  replied  through  his  secretary  coldly  but 
oolitely,  acknowledging  the  receipt  of  his  work,  and  adding 
hat,  in  accordance  with  the  rules  of  the  society,  the  symphony 
vould  be  given  out  to  the  orchestra  immediately  and  put  to 
he  test  of  a general  rehearsal  before  it  could  be  accepted  for 
oublic  hearing.  A rule  is  a rule.  Christophe  had  to  bow  to  it. 


478  JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 

. 

though  it  was  a pure  formality  which  served  to  weed  out  the 
lucubrations  of  amateurs  which  were  sometimes  a nuisance. 

A few  weeks  later  Christophe  was  told  that  his  composition 
was  to  be'rehearsed.  On  principle  everything  was  done  privately 
and  even  the  author  was  not  permitted  to  be  present  at  the 
rehearsal.  But  by  a generally  agreed  indulgence  the  author  ] 
was  always  admitted;  only  he  did  not  show  himself.  Every- 
body knew  it  and  everybody  pretended  not  to  know  it.  On 
ihe  appointed  day  one  of  his  friends  brought  Christophe  to 
the  hall,  where  he  sat  at  the  back  of  a box.  He  was  surprised 
to  see  that  at  this  private  rehearsal  the  hall — at  least  the  ground 
floor  seats — were  almost  all  filled ; a crowd  of  dilettante  idlers 
and  critics  moved  about  and  chattered  to  each  other.  The 
orchestra  had  to  ignore  their  presence. 

They  began  with  the  Brahms  Rhapsody  for  alto,  chorus  of 
male  voices,  and  orchestra  on  a fragment  of  the  Earzreise. 
im  Winter  of  Goethe.  Christophe,  who  detested  the  majestic^ 
sentimentality  of  the  work,  thought  that  perhaps  the  “ Brahm- 
ins ” had  introduced  it  politely  to  avenge  themselves  by  forcing , 
him  to  hear  a composition  of  which  he  had  written  irreverently. 
The  idea  made  him  laugh,  and  his  good  humour  increased; 
when  after  the  Rhapsody  there  came  two  other  productions  by 
known  musicians  whom  he  had  taken  to  task ; there  seemed  to  ^ 
be  no  doubt  about  their  intentions.  And  while  he  could  not: 
help  making  a face  at  it  he  thought  that  after  all  it  was  quite  ^ 
fair  tactics;  and,  failing  the  music,  he  appreciated  the  joke. ^ 
It  even  amused  him  to  applaud  ironically  with  the  audience,  j 
which  made  manifest  its  enthusiasm  for  Brahms  and  his  like.  • 

At  last  it  came  to  Christophe’s  symphony.  He  saw  from 
the  way  the  orchestra  and  thq  people  in  the  hall  were  looking  at 
his  box  that  they  were  aware  of  his  presence.  He  hid  himself. 
He  waited  with  the  catch  at  his  heart  which  every  musician 
feels  at  the  moment  when  the  conductor’s  wand  is  raised  and 
the  waters  of  the  music  gather  in  silence  before  bursting  their 
dam.  He  had  never  yet  heard  his  work  played.  How  would 
the  creatures  of  his  dreams  live?  How  would  their  voices 
sound?  He  felt  their  roaring  within  him;  and  he  leaned  over 
the  abyss  of  sounds  waiting  fearfully  for  what  should  come 
forth. 


EEVOLT 


479 


What  did  come  forth  was  a nameless  thing,  a shapeless  hotch- 
potch. Instead  of  the  bold  columns  which  were  to  support  the 
front  of  the  building  the  chords  came  crumbling  down  like  a 
building  in  ruins;  there  was  nothing  to  be  seen  but  the  dust 
of  mortar.  For  a moment  Christophe  was  not  quite  sure 
whether  they  were  really  playing  his  work.  He  cast  back  for  the 
train,  the  rhythm  of  his  thoughts;  he  could  not  recognize  it; 
it  went  on  babbling  and  hiccoughing  like  a drunken  man 
clinging  close  to  the  wall,  and  he  was  overcome  with  shame, 
as  though  he  had  himself  been  seen  in  that  condition.  It  was 
of  no  avail  to  think  that  he  had  not  written  such  stuff;  when 
an  idiotic  interpreter  destroys  a man’s  thoughts  he  has  always 
a moment  of  doubt  when  he  asks  himself  in  consternation  if  he 
is  himself  responsible  for  it.  The  audience  never  asks  such 
a question;  the  audience  believes  in  the  interpreter,  in  the 
singers,  in  the  orchestra  whom  they  are  accustomed  to  hear  as 
they  believe  in  their  newspaper;  they  cannot  make  a mistake; 
if  they  say  absurd  things,  it  is  the  absurdity  of  the  author.  This 
audience  was  the  less  inclined  to  doubt  because  it  liked  to 
believe.  Christophe  tried  to  persuade  himself  that  the  Kapell- 
meister was  aware  of  the  hash  and  would  stop  the  or- 
chestra and  begin  again.  The  instruments  were  not  playing 
together.  The  horn  had  missed  his  beat  and  had  come  in  a 
bar  too  late;  he  went  on  for  a few  minutes,  and  then  stopped 
quietly  to  clean  his  instrument.  Certain  passages  for  the  oboe 
had  absolutely  disappeared.  It  was  impossible  for  the  most 
skilled  ear  to  pick  up  the  thread  of  the  musical  idea,  or  even 
to  imagine  that  there  was  one.  Fantastic  instrumentations,  hu- 
moristic sallies  became  grotesque  through  the  coarseness  of  the 
execution.  It  was  lamentably  stupid,  the  work  of  an  idiot,  of 
a joker  who  knew  nothing  of  music.  Christophe  tore  his  hair. 
He  tried  to  interrupt,  but  the  friend  who  was  with  him  held 
him  back,  assuring  him  that  the  Herr  Kapellmeister  must  surely 
see  the  faults  of  the  execution  and  would  put  everything  right 
— that  Christophe  must  not  show  himself  and  that  if  he  made 
any  remark  it  would  have  a very  bad  effect.  He  made  Chris- 
tophe sit  at  the  very  back  of  the  box.  Christophe  obeyed,  but  he 
beat  his  head  with  his  fists;  and  every  fresh  monstrosity  drew 
from  him  a groan  of  indignation  and  misery. 


480 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


"The  wretches!  The  wretches!  . . 

He  groaned,  and  squeezed  his  hands  tight  to  keep  himself 
from  crying  out. 

Now  mingled  with  the  wrong  notes  there  came  up  to  him 
the  muttering  of  the  audience,  who  were  beginning  to  be  rest- 
less. At  first  it  was  only  a tremor;  but  soon  Christophe  was 
left  without  a doubt;  they  were  laughing.  The  musicians  of 
the  orchestra  had  given  the  signal;  some  of  them  did  not  con- 
ceal their  hilarity.  The  audience,  certain  then  that  the  music 
was  laughable,  rocked  with  laughter.  This  merriment  became 
general;  it  increased  at  the  return  of  a very  rhythmical  motif 
which  the  double-basses  accentuated  in  a burlesque  fashion.  Only 
the  Kapellmeister  went  on  through  the  uproar  inperturbably 
beating  time. 

At  last  they  reached  the  end  (the  best  things  come  to  an 
end).  It  was  the  turn  of  the  audience.  They  exploded  with 
delight,  an  explosion  which  lasted  for  several  minutes.  Some  ■ 
hissed;  others  applauded  ironically;  the  wittiest  of  all  shouted  ^ 
" Encore ! A bass  voice  coming  from  a stage  box  began  to  • 
imitate  the  grotesque  motif.  Other  jokers  followed  suit  and  ^ 
imitated  it  also.  Some  one  shouted  " Author ! It  was  long  i 
since  these  witty  folk  had  been  so  highly  entertained.  ■ 

When  the  tumult  was  calmed  down  a little  the  Kapellmeister^  . 
standing  quite  impassive  with  his  face  turned  towards  the  , 
audience  though  he  was  pretending  not  to  see  it — (the  audience  ; 
was  still  supposed  to  be  non-existent) — made  a sign  to  the  ^ 
audience  that  he  was  about  to  speak.  There  was  a cry  of  " Ssh,’^  | 
and  silence.  He  waited  a moment  longer;  then — (his  voice  ) 
was  curt,  cold,  and  cutting)  : | 

" Gentlemen, he  said,  " I should  certainly  not  have  let  that  1 
be  played  through  to  the  end  if  I had  not  wished  to  make  an 
example  of  the  gentleman  who  has  dared  to  write  offensively 
of  the  great  Brahms.’’ 

That  was  all ; and  jumping  down  from  his  stand  he  went  out 
amid  cheers  from  the  delighted  audience.  They  tried  to  recall 
him;  the  applause  went  on  for  a few  minutes  longer.  But  he 
did  not  return.  The  orchestra  went  away.  The  audience  de- 
cided to  go  too.  The  concert  was  over. 

It  had  been  a good  day. 


EEVOLT 


481 


Christophe  had  gone  already.  Hardly  had  he  seen  the 
wretched  conductor  leave  his  desk  when  he  had  rushed  from  the 
box;  he  plunged  down  the  stairs  from  the  first  fioor  to  meet 
him  and  slap  his  face.  His  friend  who  had  brought  him  fol- 
lowed and  tried  to  hold  him  back,  but  Christophe  brushed  him 
aside  and  almost  threw  him  downstairs; — (he  had  reason  to 
believe  that  the  fellow  was  concerned  in  the  trick  which  had 
been  played  him).  Fortunately  for  H.  Euphrat  and  himself  the 
door  leading  to  the  stage  was  shut;  and  his  furious  knocking 
could  not  make  them  open  it.  However  the  audience  was  begin- 
ning to  leave  the  hall.  Christophe  could  not  atay  there.  He 
fled. 

He  was  in  an  indescribable  condition.  He  walked  blindly, 
waving  his  arms,  rolling  his  eyes,  talking  aloud  like  a madman; 
he  suppressed  his  cries  of  indignation  and  rage.  The  street 
was  almost  empty.  The  concert  hall  had  been  built  the  year 
before  in  a new  neighborhood  a little  way  out  of  the  town; 
and  Christophe  instinctively  fled  towards  the  country  across 
the  empty  fields  in  which  were  a few  lonely  shanties  and  scaf- 
foldings surrounded  by  fences.  His  thoughts  were  murderous; 
he  could  have  killed  the  man  who  had  put  such  an  affront  upon 
him.  Alas ! and  when  he  had  killed  him  would  there  be  any 
change  in  the  animosity  of  those  people  whose  insulting  laugh- 
I ter  was  still  ringing  in  his  ears?  They  were  too  many;  he 
could  do  nothing  against  them;  they  were  all  agreed — they  who 
were  divided  about  so  many  things — ^to  insult  and  crush  him. 
It  was  past  understanding;  there  was  hatred  in  them.  What 
had  he  done  to  them  all?  There  were  beautiful  things  in  him, 
things  to  do  good  and  make  the  heart  big;  he  had  tried  to 
say  them,  to  make  others  enjoy  them ; he  thought  they  would  be 
happy  like  himself.  Even  if  they  did  not  like  them  they  should 
be  grateful  to  him  for  his  intentions;  they  could,  if  need  be, 
show  him  kindly  where  he  had  been  wrong;  but  that  they  should 
take  such  a malignant  joy  in  insulting  and  odiously  travestying 
his  ideas,  in  trampling  them  underfoot,  and  killing  him 
by  ridicule,  how  was  it  possible?  In  his  excitement  he  exag- 
gerated their  hatred;  he  thought  it  much  more  serious  than 
, such  mediocre  people  could  ever  be.  He  sobbed : What  have 
I done  to  them?  He  choked,  he  thought  that  all  was  lost,  just 


482 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


as  he  did  when  he  was  a child  coming  into  contact  for  the  first 
time  with  human  wickedness. 

And  when  he  looked  about  him  he  suddenly  saw  that  he  had 
reached  the  edge  of  the  mill-race,  at  the  very  spot  where  a few 
years  before  his  father  had  been  drowned.  And  at  once  he 
thought  of  drowning  himself  too.  lie  was  just  at  the  point  of  * 
making  the  plunge. 

But  as  he  leaned  over  the  steep  bank,  fascinated  by  the  calm 
clean  aspect  of  the  water,  a tiny  bird  in  a tree  by  his  side 
began  to  sing — ^to  sing  madly.  He  held  his  breath  to  listen. 
The  water  murmured.  The  ripening  corn  moaned  as  it  waved 
under  the  soft  caressing  wind;  the  poplars  shivered.  Behind 
the  hedge  on  the  road,  out  of  sight,  bees  in  hives  in  a garden 
filled  the  air  with  their  scented  music.  From  the  other  side  of 
the  stream  a cow  was  chewing  the  cud  and  gazing  with  soft  | 
eyes.  A little  fair-haired  girl  was  sitting  on  a wall,  with  a light 
basket  on  her  shoulders,  like  a little  angel  with  wings,  and  she  ; 
was  dreaming,  and  swinging  her  bare  legs  and  humming  aim-  j 
lessly.  Far  away  in  a meadow  a white  dog  was  leaping  and 
running  in  wide  circles.  Christophe  leaned  against  a tree  and  | 
listened  and  watched  the  earth  in  Spring;  he  was  caught  up  by  | 
the  peace  and  joy  of  these  creatures;  he  could  forget,  he  could  j 
forget.  Suddenly  he  clasped  the  tree  with  his  arms  and  leaned 
his  cheek  against  it.  He  threw  himself  on  the  ground;  he  | 
buried  his  face  in  the  grass;  he  laughed  nervously,  happily,  i 
All  the  beauty,  the  grace,  the  charm  of  life  wrapped  him  round, 
imbued  his  soul,  and  he  sucked  them  up  like  a sponge.  He  | 
thought : 

Why  are  you  so  beautiful,  and  they — men — so  ugly  ? ^ 

No  matter!  He  loved  it,  he  loved  it,  he  felt  that  he  would 
always  love  it,  and  that  nothing  could  ever  take  it  from  him. 
He  held  the  earth  to  his  breast.  He  held  life  to  his  breast : ; 

I love  you  I You  are  mine.  They  cannot  take  you  from  j 
me.  Let  them  do  what  they  will ! Let  them  make  me  suffer ! J 
. . . Suffering  also  is  life ! i 

Christophe  began  bravely  to  worl^  again.  He  refused  to  have  I 
anything  more  to  do  with  men  of  letters  — well  named — I 
makers  of  phrases,  the  sterile  babblers,  journalists,  critics,  I 


KEVOLT 


483 


the  exploiters  and  traffickers  of  art.  As  for  musicians  he  would 
waste  no  more  time  in  battling  with  their  prejudices  and 
jealousy.  They  did  not  want  him?  Very  well!  He  did  not 
want  them.  He  had  his  work  to  do  ^ he  would  do  it.  The 
Court  had  given  him  back  his  liberty;  he  was  grateful  for  it. 
w He  was  grateful  to  the  people  for  their  hostility ; he  could  work 
in  peace. 

Louisa  approved  with  all  her  heart.  She  had  no  ambition; 
she  was  not  a Krafft;  she  was  like  neither  his  father  nor  his 
grandfather.  She  did  not  want  honors  or  reputation  for  her 
son.  She  would  have  liked  him  to  be  rich  and  famous;  but  if 
those  advantages  could  only  be  bought  at  the  price  of  so  much 
unpleasantness  she  much  preferred  not  to  bother  about  them. 
She  had  been  more  upset  by  Christophers  grief  over  his  rupture 
with  the  Palace  than  by  the  event  itself;  and  she  was  heartily 
glad  that  he  had  quarreled  with  the  review  and  newspaper 
people.  She  had  a peasant’s  distrust  of  blackened  paper ; it  was 
only  a waste  of  time  and  made  enemies.  She  had  sometimes 
heard  his  young  friends  of  the  Eeview  talking  to  Christophe; 
she  had  been  horrified  by  their  malevolence;  they  tore  every- 
; thing  to  pieces  and  said  horrible  things  about  everybody;  and 
the  worse  things  they  said  the  better  pleased  they  were.  She 
: did  not  like  them.  No  doubt  they  were  very  clever  and  very 
learned^  but  they  were  not  kind,  and  she  was  very  glad  that 
Christophe  saw  no  more  of  them.  She  was  full  of  common 
sense:  what  good  were  they  to  him? 

They  may  say,  write,  and  think  what  they  like  of  me,”  said 
Christophe.  They  cannot  prevent  my  being  myself.  What  do 
I their  ideas  or  their  art  matter  to  me  ? I deny  them ! ” 

It  is  all  very  fine  to  deny  the  world.  But  the  world  is  not 
so  easily  denied  by  a young  man’s  boasting.  Christophe  was 
sincere,  but  he  was  under  illusion;  he  did  not  know  himself. 
He  was  not  a monk ; he  had  not  the  temperament  for  renounc- 
ing the  world,  and  besides  he  was  not  old  enough  to  do  so. 
At  first  he  did  not  suffer  much,  he  was  plunged  in  composi- 
. tion ; and  while  his  work  lasted  he  did  not  feel  the  want  of  any- 
, thing.  But  when  he  came  to  the  period  of  depression  which  fol- 


484 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


lows  the  completion  of  a work  and  lasts  until  a new  work  takes 
possession  of  the  mind^  he  looked  about  him  and  was  horrified 
by  his  loneliness.  He  asked  himself  why  he  wrote.  While  a 
man  is  writing  he  never  asks  himself  that  question;  he  must 
write,  there  is  no  arguing  about  it.  And  then  he  finds  himself 
with  the  work  that  he  has  begotten:  the  great  instinct  which 
caused  it  to  spring  forth  is  silent ; he  does  not  understand  why 
it  was  born:  he  hardly  recognizes  it,  it  is  almost  a stranger  to 
him;  he  longs  to  forget  it.  And  that  is  impossible  as  long 
as  it  is  not  published  or  played,  or  living  its  own  life  in  the 
world.  Till  then  it  is  like  a new-born  child  attached  to  its 
mother,  a living  thing  bound  fast  to  his  living  fiesh;  it  must 
be  amputated  at  all  costs  or  it  will  not  live.  The  more  Chris- 
tophe  composed  the  more  he  suffered  under  the  weight  of  these 
creatures  who  had  sprung  forth  from  himself  and  could  neither 
live  nor  die.  He  was  haunted  by  them.  Who  could  deliver 
him  from  them?  Some  obscure  impulse  would  stir  in  these 
children  of  his  thoughts;  they  longed  desperately  to  break 
away  from  him  to  expand  into  other  souls  like  the  quick  and 
fruitful  seed  which  the  wind  scatters  over  the  universe.  Must 
he  remain  imprisoned  in  his  sterility?  He  raged  against  it. 

Since  every  outlet — theaters,  concerts — was  closed  to  him, 
and  nothing  would  induce  him  to  approach  those  managers  who 
had  once  failed  him,  there  was  nothing  left  but  for  him  to  pub- 
lish his  writings,  but  he  could  not  flatter  himself  that  it  would 
be  easier  to  find  a publisher  to  produce  his  work  than  an  or- 
chestra to  play  it.  The  two  or  three  clumsy  attempts  that  he 
had  made  were  enough;  rather  than  expose  himself  to  another 
rebuff,  or  to  bargain  with  one  of  these  music  merchants  and 
put  up  with  his  patronizing  airs,  he  preferred  to  publish  it  at 
his  own  expense.  It  was  an  act  of  madness ; he  had  some  small 
savings  out  of  his  Court  salary  and  the  proceeds  of  a few 
concerts,  but  the  source  from  which  the  money  had  come  was 
dried  up  and  it  would  be  a long  time  before  he  could  find 
another;  and  he  should  have  been  prudent  enough  to  be  careful 
with  his  scanty  funds  which  had  to  help  him  over  the  difficult 
period  upon  which  he  was  entering.  Not  only  did  he  not  do 
so;  but,  as  his  savings  were  not  enough  to  cover  the  expenses  of 


EEVOLT 


485 


publication,  he  did  not  shrink  from  getting  into  debt.  Louisa 
dared  not  say  anything;  she  found  him  absolutely  unreasonable, 
and  did  not  understand  how  anybody  could  spend  money  for 
the  sake  of  seeing  his  name  on  a book ; but  since  it  was  a way 
of  making  him  be  patient  and  of  keeping  him  with  her,  she 
was  only  too  happy  for  him  to  have  that  satisfaction. 

Instead  of  offering  the  public  compositions  of  a familiar 
and  undisturbing  kind,  in  which  it  could  feel  at  home,  Chris- 
tophe  chose  from  among  his  manuscripts  a suite  very  individual 
in  character,  which  he  valued  highly.  They  were  piano  pieces 
mixed  with  Lieder,  some  very  short  and  popular  in  style,  others 
very  elaborate  and  almost  dramatic.  The  whole  formed  a 
'series  of  impressions,  joyous  or  mild,  linked  together  naturally 
and  written  alternately  for  the  piano  and  the  voice,  alone,  or 
accompanied.  For,^^  said  Christophe,  when  I dream,  I do 
not  always  formulate  what  I feel.  I suffer,  I am  happy,  and 
have  no  words  to  say;  but  then  comes  a moment  when  I must 
say  what  I am  feeling,  and  I sing  without  thinking  of  what  I 
am  doing;  sometimes  I sing  only  vague  words,  a few  discon- 
nected phrases,  sometimes  whole  poems ; then  I begin  to  dream 
again.  And  so  the  day  goes  by;  and  I have  tried  to  give  the 
impression  of  a day.  Why  these  gathered  impressions  com- 
posed only  of  songs  or  preludes  ? There  is  nothing  more  false 
or  less  harmonious.  One  must  try  to  give  the  free  play  of  the 
soul.'’  He  had  called  his  suite:  A Day.  The  different  parts 
of  the  composition  bore  sub-titles,  shortly  indicating  the  suc- 
cession of  his  inward  dreams.  Christophe  had  written  mysteri- 
ous dedications,  initials,  dates,  which  only  he  could  understand, 
as  they  reminded  him  of  poetic  moments  or  beloved  faces:  the 
gay  Corinne,  the  languishing  Sabine,  and  the  little  unknown 
Frenchwoman. 

Besides  this  work  he  selected  thirty  of  his  Lieder — those 
which  pleased  him  most,  and  consequently  pleased  the  public 
least.  He  avoided  choosing  the  most  melodious " of  his 
melodies,  but  he  did  choose  the  most  characteristic.  (The  pub- 
lic always  has  a horror  of  anything  characteristic."  Char- 
acterless things  are  more  likely  to  please  them.) 

These  Lieder  were  written  to  poems  of  old  Silesian  poets  of 


wmBm 


, 486  JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 

the  seventeenth  century  that  Christophe  had  read  by  chance  in 
a popular  collection,  and  whose  loyalty  he  had  loved.  Two 
especially  were  dear  to  him,  dear  as  brothers,  two  creatures  full 
of  genius  and  both  had  died  at  thirty:  the  charming  Paul 
Fleming,  the  traveler  to  the  Caucasus  and  to  Ispahan,  who  pre- 
served his  soul  pure,  loving  and  serene  in  the  midst  of  the 
savagery  of  war,  the  sorrows  of  life,  and  the  corruption  of  his 
time,  and  Johann  Christian  Gunther,  the  unbalanced  genius 
who  wore  himself  out  in  debauchery  and  despair,  casting  his 
life  to  the  four  winds.  He  had  translated  Gunther’s  cries 
of  provocation  and  vengeful  irony  against  the  hostile  God  who 
overwhelms  His  creatures,  his  furious  curses  like  those  of  a 
Titan  overthrown  hurling  the  thunder  back  against  the  heavens. 

He  had  selected  Fleming’s  love  songs  to  Anemone  and  Basilene, 
soft  and  sweet  as  flowers,  and  the  rondo  of  the  stars,  the 
Tanzlied  (dancing  song)  of  hearts  glad  and  limpid — and  the  ■ 
calm  heroic  sonnet  To  Himself  {An  Sich),  which  Christophe  , 
used  to  recite  as  a prayer  every  morning.  ; 

The  smiling  optimism  of  the  pious  Paul  Gerhardt  also  had  ! 
its  charm  for  Christophe.  It  was  a rest  for  him  on  recovering 
from  his  own  sorrows.  He  loved  that  innocent  vision  of  nature  ] 
as  God,  the  fresh  meadows,  where  the  storks  walk  gravely  among  t 
the  tulips  and  white  narcissus,  by  little  brooks  singing  on  the 
sands,  the  transparent  air  wherein  there  pass  the  wide-winged  ' 
swallows  and  flying  doT«s,  the  gaiety  of  a sunbeam  piercing  the  ; 
rain,  and  the  luminous  sky  smiling  through  the  clouds,  and  ■ 
the  serene  majesty  of  the  evening,  the  sweet  peace  of  the  ] 
forests,  the  cattle,  the  bowers  and  the  fields.  He  had  had  the  < 
impertinence  to  set  to  music  several  of  those  mystic  canticles  i 
which  are  still  sung  in  Protestant  communities.  And  he  had  | 
avoided  preserving  the  choral  character.  Far  from  it:  he  had 
a horror  of  it;  he  had  given  them  a free  and  vivacious  char-  a 
acter.  Old  Gerhardt  would  have  shuddered  at  the  devilish  | 
pride  which  was  breathed  forth  now  in  certain  lines  of  his 
Song  of  the  Christian  Traveler,  or  the  pagan  delight  which 
made  this  peaceful  stream  of  his  Song  of  Summer  bubble  over 
like  a torrent.  ■ 

The  collection  was  published  without  any  regard  for  common 
sense,  of  course.  The  publisher  whom  Christophe  paid  for 


EEVOLT 


487 


printing  and  storing  his  Lieder  had  no  other  claim  to  his  choice 
than  that  of  being  his  neighbor.  He  was  not  equiped  tor 
such  important  work;  the  printing  went  on  for  months;  there 
were  mistakes  and  expensive  corrections.  Christophe  knew 
nothing  about  it  and  the  whole  thing  cost  more  by  a third  than 
it  need  have  done;  the  expenses  far  exceeded  anything  he  had 
anticipated.  Then  when  it  was  done,  Christophe  found  an 
enormous  edition  on  his  hands  and  did  not  know  what  to  do 
with  it.  The  publisher  had  no  customers;  he  took  no  steps  to 
circulate  the  work.  And  his  apathy  was  quite  in  accord  with 
Christophe’s  attitude.  When  he  asked  him,  to  satisfy  his  con- 
science, to  write  him  a short  advertisement  of  it,  Christophe 
replied  that  “he  did  not  want  any  advertisement;  if  his  music 
was  good  it  would  speak  for  itself.”  The  publisher  religiously 
respected  his  wishes;  he  put  the  edition  away  in  his  warehouse. 
It  was  well  kept;  for  in  six  months  not  a copy  was  sold. 

While  he  was  waiting  for  the  public  to  make  up  its  mind 
Christophe  had  to  find  some  way  of  repairing  the  hole  he  had 
made  in  his  means ; and  he  could  not  be  nice  about  it,  for  he 
had  to  live  and  pay  his  debts.  -Not  only  were  his  debts  larger 
than  he  had  imagined  but  he  saw  that  the  moneys  on  which 
he  had  counted  were  less  than  he  had  thought.  Had  he  lost 
money  without  knowing  it  or— what  was  infinitely  more  proba- 
ble—had  he  reckoned  up  wrongly?  (He  had  never  been  able  to 
add  correctly.)  It  did  not  matter  much  why  the  money  was 
missing;  it  was  missing  without  a douht.  Louisa  had  to 
give  her  all  to  help  her  son.  He  was  bitterly  remorseful  and 
tried  to  pay  her  back  as  soon  as  possible  and  at  all  costs.  He 
tried  to  get  lessons,  though  it  was  painful  to  him  to  ask  and 
to  put  up  with  refusals.  He  was  out  of  favor  altogether;  he 
found  it  very  difficult  to  obtain  pupils  again.  And  so  when  it 
was  suggested  that  he  should  teach  at  a school  he  was  only  too 

^ It  was  a semi-religious  institution.  The  director,  an  astute 
gentleman,  had  seen,  though  he  was  no  musician,  how  useful 
Christophe  might  be,  and  how  cheaply  in  his  present  position. 
, He  was  pleasant  and  paid  very  little.  When  Christophe  ven- 
tured to  make  a timid  remark  the  director  told  him  with  a 


488 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


kindly  smile  that  as  he  no  longer  held  an  official  position  he 
could  not  very  well  expect  more. 

It  was  a sad  task ! It  was  not  so  much  a matter  of  teaching 
the  pupils  music  as  of  making  their  parents  and  themselves  i 
believe  that  they  had  learned  it.  The  chief  thing  was  to  make  j 
them  able  to  sing  at  the  ceremonies  to  which  the  public  were  ad- 
mitted. It  did  not  matter  how  it  was  done.  Christophe  was 
in  despair;  he  had  not  even  the  consolation  of  telling  himself 
as  he  fulfilled  his  task  that  he  was  doing  useful  work;  his 
conscience  reproached  him  with  it  as  hypocrisy.  He  tried  to 
give  the  children  more  solid  instruction  and  to  make  them 
acquainted  with  and  love  serious  music;  but  they  did  not  care 
for  it  a bit.  Christophe  could  not  succeed  in  making  them 
listen  to  it ; he  had  no  authority  over  them ; in  truth  he  was  not 
made  for  teaching  children.  He  took  no  interest  in  their 
floundering;  he  tried  to  explain  to  them  all  at  once  the  theory  ‘ 
of  music.  When  he  had  to  give  a piano  lesson  he  would  set  his  j 
pupil  a symphony  of  Beethoven  which  he  would  play  as  a i 
duet  with  her.  Naturally  that  could  not  succeed;  he  would  i 
explode  angrily,  drive  the  pupil  from  the  piano  and  go  on  i 
playing  alone  for  a long  time.  He  was  just  the  same  with  his  1 
private  pupils  outside  the  school.  He  had  not  an  ounce  of  ! 
patience;  for  instance  he  would  tell  a young  lady  who  prided  ! 
herself  on  her  aristocratic  appearance  and  position,  that  she  ' 
played  like  a kitchen  maid;  or  he  would  even  write  to  her  ; 
mother  and  say  that  he  gave  it  up,  that  it  would  kill  him  if  j 
he  went  on  long  bothering  about  a girl  so  devoid  of  talent.  All  i 
of  which  did  not  improve  his  position.  His  few  pupils  left 
him;  he  could  not  keep  any  of  them  more  than  a few  months,  v 
His  mother  argued  with  him;  he  would  argue  with  himself.  ■ 
Louisa  made  him  promise  that  at  least  he  would  not  break  with 
the  school  he  had  joined;  for  if  he  lost  that  position  he  did  not 
know  what  he  should  do  for  a living.  And  so  he  restrained 
himself  in  spite  of  his  disgust ; he  was  most  exemplarily 
punctual.  But  how  could  he  conceal  his  thoughts  when  a 
donkey  of  a pupil  blundered  for  the  tenth  time  in  some  pas- 
sages, or  when  he  had  to  coach  his  class  for  the  next  concert 
in  some  foolish  chorus ! — (For  he  was  not  even  allowed  to  choose 


EEVOLT 


489 


his  programme:  his  taste  was  not  trusted) — He  was  not  exactly 
zealous  about  it  all.  And  yet  he  went  stubbornly  on,  silent, 
frowning,  only  betraying  his  secret  wrath  by  occasionally 
thumping  on  his  desk  and  making  his  pupils  jump  in  their 
seats.  But  sometimes  the  pill  was  too  bitter;  he  could  not 
bear  it  any  longer.  In  the  middle  of  the  chorus  he  would  in- 
terrupt the  singers: 

“Oh!  Stop!  Stop!  I’ll  play  you  some  Wagner  instead.” 

They  asked  nothing  better.  They  played  cards  behind  his 
back.  There  was  always  someone  who  reported  the  matter  to 
the  director;  and  Christophe  would  be  reminded  that  he  was 
not  there  to  make  his  pupils  like  music  but  to  make  them 
sing.  He  received  his  scoldings  wdth  a shudder;  but  he  ac- 
cepted them;  he  did  not  want  to  lose  his  work.  Who  would 
have  thought  a few  years  before,  when  his  career  looked  so 
assured  and  brilliant  (when  he  had  done  nothing),  that  he 
would  be  reduced  to  such  humiliation  just  as  he  was  beginning, 
to  be  worth  something? 

Among  the  hurts  to  his  vanity  that  he  came  by  in  his  work 
at  the  school,  one  of  the  most  painful  was  having  to  call  on 
his  colleagues.  He  paid  two  calls  at  random ; and  they  bored 
him  so  that  he  had  not  the  heart  to  go  on.  The  two  privileged 
persons  were  not  at  all  pleased  about  it,  but  the  others  were 
personally  affronted.  They  all  regarded  Christophe  as  their 
inferior  in  position  and  intelligence ; and  they  assumed  a 
patronizing  manner  towards  him.  Sometimes  he  was  over- 
whelmed by  it,  for  they  seemed  to  be  so  sure  of  themselves  and 
the  opinion  they  had  of  him  that  he  began  to  share  it;  he  felt 
stupid  with  them ; what  could  he  have  found  to  say  to  them  ? 
They  were  full  of  their  profession  and  saw  nothing  beyond  it. 
They  were  not  men.  If  only  they  had  been  books ! But  they 
were  only  notes  to  books,  philological  commentaries. 

Christophe  avoided  meeting  them.  But  sometimes  he  was 
forced  to  do  so.  The  director  was  at  home  once  a month  in 
the  afternoon;  and  he  insisted  on  all  his  people  being  there. 
Christophe,  who  had  cut  the  first  afternoon,  without  excuse, 
in  the  vain  hope  that  his  absence  would  not  be  noticed,  was 
ever  afterwards  the  object  of  sour  attention.  Next  time  he  was' 


490 


JEAlSr-CHRISTOPHE 


iGctured  by  his  mothGr  and  decided  to  go  ^ he  was  as  solemn 
about  it  as  though  he  were  going  to  a funeral. 

He  found  himself  at  a gathering  of  the  teachers  of  the 
school  and  other  institutions  of  the  town,  and  their  wives 
and  daughters.  They  were  all  huddled  together  in  a room  too 
small  for  them,  and  grouped  hierarchically.  They  paid  no 
attention  to  him.  The  group  nearest  him  was  talking  of 
pedagogy  and  cooking.  All  the  wives  of  the  teachers  had  cu- 
linary recipes  which  they  set  out  with  pedantic  exuberance 
and  insistence.  The  men  were  no  less  interested  in  these  mat- 
ters and  hardly  less  competent.  They  were  as  proud  of  the 
domestic  talents  of  their  wives  as  they  of  their  husbands’  learn- 
ing.  Christophe  stood  by  a window  leaning  against  the  wall, 
not  knowing  how  to  look,  now  trying  to  smile  stupidly,  now 
gloomy  with  a fixed  stare  and  unmoved  features,  and  he  was 
bored  to  death.  A little  away  from  him,  sitting  in  the  recess  ' 
of  the  window,  was  a young  woman  to  whom  nobody  was  talk-  i 
ing  and  she  was  as  bored  as  he.  They  both  looked  at  the  room  i 
and  not  at  each  other.  It  was  only  after  some  time  that  they  5 
noticed  each  other  just  as  they  both  turned  away  to  yawn,  both 
being  at  the  limit  of  endurance.  Just  at  that  moment  their  | 
eyes  met.  They  exchanged  a look  of  friendly  understanding.  : 
He  moved  towards  her.  She  said  in  a low  voice : ; 

Are  you  amused  ? ” • 


He  turned  his  back  on  the  room,  and,  looking  out  of  the 
window,  put  out  his  tongue.  She  burst  out  laughing,  and 
suddenly  waking  up  she  signed  to  him  to  sit  down  by  her  side. 
They  introduced  themselves ; she  was  the  wife  of  Professor 
Reinhart,  who  lectured  on  natural  history  at  the  school,  and 
was  newly  come  to  the  town,  where  they  knew  nobody.  She 
was  not  beautiful ; she  had  a large  nose,  ugly  teeth,  and  she 
lacked  freshness ; but  she  had  keen,  clever  eyes  and  a kindly 
smile.  She  chattered  like  a magpie;  he  answered  her  solemnly; 
she  had  an  amusing  frankness  and  a droll  wit;  they  laugh- 
ingly exchanged  impressions  out  loud  without  bothering  about 
the  people  round  them.  Their  neighbors,  who  had  not  deigned  to 
notice  their  existence  when  it  would  have  been  charitable  to 
help  them  out  of  their  loneliness,  now  threw  angry  looks 


i 

i 

1 


• \ ■ 

EEVOLT  491 

at  them;  it  was  in  bad  taste  to  be  so  much  amused.  But  they 
did  not  care  what  the  others  might  think  of  them;  they  were 
taking  their  revenge  in  their  chatter. 

In  the  end  Frau  Eeinhart  introduced  her  husband  to  Chris- 
tophe.  He  was  extremely  ugly;  he  had  a pale,  greasy,  pock- 
marked, rather  sinister  face,  but  he  looked  very  kind.  He 
spoke  low  down  in  his  throat  and  pronounced  his  words  sen- 
tentiously,  stammeringly,  pausing  between  each  syllable. 

Thev  had  been  married  a few  months  only  and  these  two 
plain  people  were  in  love  with  each  other;  they  had  an  affec- 
tionate way  of  looking  at  each  other,  talking  to  each  other, 
taking  each  other's  hands  in  the  presence  of  everybody— which 
was  comic  and  touching.  If  one  wanted  anything  the  other 
would  want  it  too.  And  so  they  invited  Christophe  to  go  and 
sup  with  them  after  the  reception.  Christophe  began  jokingly 
to  beg  to  be  excused;  he  said  that  the  best  thing  to  do  that 
evening  would  be  to  go  to  bed ; he  was  quite  worn  out  with 
boredom,  as  tired  as  though  he  had  walked  ten  miles.  But 
Frau  Eeinhart  said  that  he  could  not  be  left  in  that  condition; 
it  would  be  dangerous  to  spend  the  night  with  such  gloomy 
thoughts.  Christophe  let  them  drag  him  off.  In  his  loneliness 
he  was  glad  to  have  met  these  good  people,  who  were  not  very 
distinguished  in  their  manners  but  were  simple  and  gemutlich. 

The  Eeinharts'  little  house  was  gemutlicli  like  them- 
selves. It  was  a rather  chattering  Gemut,  a Gemiit  with 
' inscriptions.  The  furniture,  the  utensils,  the  china  all  talked, 
and  went  on  repeating  their  joy  in  seeing  their  charming 
guest,"  asked  after  his  health,  and  gave  him  pleasant  and  vir- 
tuous advice.  On  the  sofa — which  was  very  hard — was  a little 
I cushion  which  murmured  amiably: 

Only  a quarter  of  an  hour!"  (Nur  ein  Viertelstundchen.) 

The  cup  of  coffee  which  was  handed  to  Christophe  insisted 
! on  his  taking  more: 

Just  a drop  ! " (NocJi  ein  ScTililcTcchen.) 

\ The  plates  seasoned  the  cooking  with  morality  and  otherwise 
! the  cooking  was  quite  excellent.  One  plate  said : 

' Think  of  everything : otherwise  no  good  will  come  to  you ! " 


p 


— 


492  JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 

Another : ^ 

Affection  and  gratitude  please  everybody.  Ingratitude 
pleases  nobody.” 

Although  Christophe  did  not  smoke,  the  ash-tray  on  the 
mantelpiece  insisted  on  introducing  itself  to  him: 

A little  resting  place  for  burning  cigars.”  {Ruhepldtzchen 
fur  brennende  Cigarren,) 

He  wanted  to  wash  his  hands.  The  soap  on  the  washstand 
said : 

For  our  charming  guest.”  (Fiir  nnseren  lieben  Gast,) 

And  the  sententious  towel,  like  a person  who  has  nothing  to 
say,  but  thinks  he  must  say  something  all  the  same,  gave  him 
this  reflection,  full  of  good  sense  but  not  very  apposite,  that 
^Ho  enjoy  the  morning  you  must  rise  early.” 

M or genstund  hat  Gold  im  MundF 

At  length  Christophe  dared  not  even  turn  in  his  chair  for 
fear  of  hearing  himself  addressed  by  other  voices  coming  from  ; 
•every  part  of  the  room.  He  wanted  to  say : 

^^Be  silent,  you  little  monsters!  We  don^t  understand  each  ' 
other.” 

And  he  burst  out  laughing  crazily  and  then  tried  to  explain  ^ 
io  his  host  and  hostess  that  he  was  thinking  of  the  gathering  ■ 
at  the  school.  He  would  not  have  hurt  them  for  the  world. 
And  he  was  not  very  sensible  of  the  ridiculous.  Very  soon  he 
grew  accustomed  to  the  loquacious  cordiality  of  these  people  : 
and  their  belongings.  He  could  have  tolerated  an5dhing  in  { 
them ! They  were  so  kind ! They  were  not  tiresome  either ; | 
if  they  had  no  taste  they  were  not  lacking  in  intelligence.  • 

They  v;ere  a little  lost  in  the  place  to  which  they  had  come.  ^ 
The  intolerable  susceptibilities  of  the  little  provincial  town  i 
did  not  allow  people  to  enter  it  as  though  it 'were  a mill,  with- 
out having  properly  asked  for  the  honor  of  becoming  part  of 
it.  The  Eeinharts  had  not  sufficiently  attended  to  the  provin- 
cial code  which  regulated  the  duties  of  new  arrivals  in  the  town 
towards  those  who  had  settled  in  it  before  them.  Eeinhart 
would  have  submitted  to  it  mechanically.  But  his  wife,  to 
whom  such  drudgery  was  oppressive — she  disliked  being  put  out 
— postponed  her  duties  from  day  to  day.  She  had  selected 
those  calls  which  bored  her  least,  to  be  paid  first,  or  she  had 


EEVOLT 


493 


put  the  others  off  indefinitely.  The  distinguished  persons  who 
were  comprised  in  the  last  category  choked  with  indignation 
at  such  a want  of  respect.  Angelica  Eeinhart— (her  husband 
called  her  Lili)— was  a little  free  in  her  manners;  she  could  not 
take  on  the  official  tone.  She  would  address  her  superiors  in 
the  hierarchy  familiarly  and  make  them  go  red  in  the  face 
with  indignation;  and  if  need  be  she  was  not  afraid  of  contra- 
dicting them.  She  had  a quick  tongue  and  always  had  to  say 
whatever  was  in  her  head;  sometimes  she  made  extraordinarily 
foolish  remarks  at  which  people  laughed  behind  her  back;  and 
also  she  could  be  malicious  whole-heartedly,  and  that  made  her 
mortal  enemies.  She  would  bite  her  tongue  as  she  was  saying 
rash  things  and  wish  she  had  not  said  them,  but  it  was  too 
late.  Her  husband,  the  gentlest  and  most  respectful  of  men, 
would  chide  her  timidly  about  it.  She  would  kiss  him  and 
say  that  she  was  a fool  and  that  he  was  right.  But  the  next 
moment  she  would  break  out  again;  and  she  would  always  say 
things  at  the  least  suitable  moment;  she  would  have  burst  if 
she  had  not  said  them.  She  was  exactly  the  sort  of  woman  to 
get  on  with  Christophe. 

Among  the  many  ridiculous  things  which  she  ought  not  to 
have  said,  and  consequently  was  always  saying,  was  her  trick  of 
perpetually  comparing  the  way  things  were  done  in  Germany 
and  the  way  they  were  done  in  France.  She  was  a German — 
(nobody  more  so) — ^but  she  had  been  brought  up  in  Alsace 
among  French  Alsatians,  and  she  had  felt  the  attraction  of 
Latin  civilization  which  so  many  Germans  in  the  annexed 
countries,  even  those  who  seem  the  least  likely  to  feel  it,  cannot 
resist.  Perhaps,  to  tell  the  truth,  the  attraction  had  become 
stronger  out  of  a spirit  of  contradiction  since  Angelica  had 
married  a North  German  and  lived  with  him  in  purely  German 
society. 

She  opened  up  her  usual  subject  of  discussion  on  her  first 
evening  with  Christophe.  She  loved  the  pleasant  freedom 
of  conversation  in  France.  Christophe  echoed  her.  France  to 
him  was  Corinne;  bright  blue  eyes,  smiling  lips,  frank  free 
manners,  a musical  voice;  he  loved  to  know  more  about  it. 

Lili  Eeinhart  clapped  her  hands  on  finding  herself  so  thor- 
oughly agreeing  with  Christophe. 


494 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


is  a pity,”  she  said,  ^^that  my  little  French  friend  has 
gone,  but  she  could  not  stand  it;  she  has  gone.” 

The  image  of  Corinne  was  at  once  blotted  out.  As  a match 
going  out  suddenly  makes  the  gentle  glimmer  of  the  stars  shine 
out  from  the  dark  sky,  another  image  and  other  eyes  appeared. 

Who  ? ” asked  Christophe  with  a start,  the  little  gover- 
ness ? ” 

What  ? ” said  Frau  Eeinhart,  you  knew  her  too  ? ” 

He  described  her;  the  two  portraits  were  identical. 

^^You  knew  her?”  repeated  Christophe.  ^^Oh!  Tell  me 
everything  you  know  about  her!  . . .” 

Frau  Eeinhart  began  by  declaring  that  they  were  bosom 
friends  and  had  no  secrets  from  each  other.  But  when  she 
had  to  go  into  detail  her  knowledge  was  reduced  to  very 
little.  They  had  met  out  calling.  Frau  Eeinhart  had  made 
advances  to  the  girl;  and  with  her  usual  cordiality  had  invited  - 
her  to  come  and  see  her.  The  girl  had  come  two  or  three  times 
and  they  had  talked.  But  the  curious  Lili  had  not  so  easily 
succeeded  in  finding  out  anything  about  the  life  of  the  little 
Frenchwoman ; the  girl  was  very  reserved ; she  had  had  to  worm 
her  story  out  of  her,  bit  by  bit.  Frau  Eeinhart  knew  that  \ 
she  was  called  Antoinette  J eannin ; she  had  no  fortune,  and  no  ^ 
friends,  except  a younger  brother  who  lived  in  Paris  and  to  ; 
whom  she  was  devoted.  She  used  always  to  talk  of  him ; he  was 
the  only  subject  about  which  she  could  talk  freely;  and  Lili  , 
Eeinhart  had  gained  her  confidence  by  showing  sympathy  and  \ 
pity  for  the  boy  living  alone  in  Paris  without  relations,  without  ] 
friends,  at  a boarding  school.  It  was  partly  to  pay  for  his  i 
education  that  Antoinette  had  accepted  a post  abroad.  But  the  < 
two  children  could  not  live  without  each  other;  they  wanted  to  j 
be  with  each  other  every  day,  and  the  least  delay  in  the 
delivery  of  their  letters  used  to  make  them  quite  ill  with  ^ 
anxiety.  Antoinette  was  always  worrying  about  her  brother,  ; 
the  poor  child  could  not  always  manage  to  hide  his  sadness  J 
and  loneliness  from  her;  every  one  of  his  complaints  used  to 
sound  through  Antoinette's  heart  and  seemed  like  to  break  it;  | 
the  thought  that  he  was  suffering  used  to  torture  her  and  she  j 
used  often  to  imagine  that  he  was  ill  and  would  not  say  so.  { 
Frau  Eeinhart  in  her  kindness  had  often  had  to  rebuke  her 


EEVOLT 


495 


for  her  ^Toundless  fears,  and  she  used  to  succeed  in  restoring 
her  confidence  for  a moment.  She  had  not  been  able  to  find 
out  anything  about  Antoinette’s  family  or  position  or  her 
inner  self.  The  girl  was  wildly  shy  and  used  to  draw  into 
herself  at  the  first  question.  The  little  she  said  showed  that 
she  was  cultured  and  intelligent  j she  seemed  to  have  a preco- 
cious knowledge  of  life  5 she  seemed  to  be  at  once  naive  and 
undeceived,  pious  and  disillusioned.  She  had  not  been  happy 
in  the  town  in  a tactless  and  unkind  family.  She  used  not  to 
complain,  but  it  was  easy  to  see  that  she  used  to  suffer  Frau 
Eeinhart  did  not  exactly  know  why  she  had  gone.  It  had  been 
said  that  she  had  behaved  badly.  Angelica  did  not  believe 
it;  she  was  ready  to  swear  that  it  was  all  a disgusting  calunany, 
worthy  of  the  foolish  rotten  town.  But  there  had  been  stories; 
it  did  not  matter  what,  did  it? 

No,”  said  Christophe,  bowing  his  head. 

“ And  so  she  has  gone.” 

“And  what  did  she  say— anything  to  you  when  she  went?” 

“ Ah ! ” said  Lili  Eeinhart,  “ I had  no  chance.  I had  gone 
to  Cologne  for  a few  days  just  then!  When  I came  back— 
spat”  (too  late). — She  stopped  to  scold  her  maid,  who  had 
brought  her  lemon  too  late  for  her  tea. 

And  she  added  sententiously  with  the  solemnity  which  the 
true  German  brings  naturally  to  the  performance  of  the  fa- 
miliar duties  of  daily  life; 

“ Too  late,  as  one  so  often  is  in  life ! ” 

(It  was  not  clear  whether  she  meant  the  lemon  or  her  inter- 
rupted story.) 

She  went  on: 

“ When  I returned  I found  a line  from  her  thanking  me  for 
all  I had  done  and  telling  me  that  she  was  going;  she  was 
returning  to  Paris;  she  gave  no  address.” 

“ And  she  did  not  write  again  ? ” 

“ Not  again.” 

Once  more  Christophe  saw  her  sad  face  disappear  into  the 
night;  once  more  he  saw  her  eyes  for  a moment  just  as  he 
had  seen  them  for  the  last  time  looking  at  him  through  the 
carrif  ge  window. 

The  enigma  of  France  was  once  more  set  before  him  more 


496  JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 

insistently  than  ever.  Christophe  never  tired  of  asking  Frau 
Reinhart  about  the  country  which  she  pretended  to  know  so 
well.  And  Frau  Reinhart  who  had  never  been  there  was  not 
reluctant  to  tell  him  about  it.  Reinhart,  a good  patriot,  full 
of  prejudices  against  France,  which  he  knew  better  than  his 
wife,  sometimes  used  to  qualify  her  remarks  when  her  enthu- 
siasm went  too  far ; but  she  would  repeat  her  assertions  only  the 
more  vigorously,  and  Christophe,  knowing  nothing  at  all  about 
it,  backed  her  up  confidently. 

What  was  more  precious  even  than  Lili  Reinhart’s  memories 
were  her  books.  She  had  a small  library  of  French  books: 
school  books,  a few  novels,  a few  volumes  bought  at  random. 
Christophe,  greedy  of  knowledge  and  ignorant  of  France, 
thought  them  a treasure  when  Reinhart  went  and  got  them  for 
him  and  put  them  at  his  disposal. 

He  began  with  volumes  of  select  passages,  old  school  books,  ‘ 
which  had  been  used  by  Lili  Reinhart  or  her  husband  in  their 
school  days.  Reinhart  had  assured  him  that  he  must  begin 
with  them  if  he  wished  to  find  his  way  about  French  literature, 
which  was  absolutely  unknown  to  him.  Christophe  was  full 
of  respect  for  those  who  knew  more  than  himself,  and  obeyed  i 
religiously;  and  that  very  evening  he  began  to  read.  He  tried 
first  of  all  to  take  stock  of  the  riches  in  his  possession. 

He  made  the  acquaintance  of  certain  French  writers,  namely : 
Thedore-Henri  Barrau,  Frangois  Petis  de  la  Croix,  Frederic 
Baudry,  Emile  Delerot,  Charles-Auguste-Desire  Filon,  Sam- 
uel Descombaz,  and  Prosper  Baur.  He  read  the  poetry  i 
of  Abbe  Joseph  Eeyre,  Pierre  Lachambaudie,  the  Due  de  ' 

Nivernois,  Andre  van  Hasselt,  Andrieux,  Madame  Colet, 
Constance-Marie  Princesse  de  Salm-Dyck,  Henriette  Hoi-  i 

lard,  Gabriel-Jean-Baptiste-Ernest-Wilfrid  Legouve,  Hip- 
polyte  Violeau,  Jean  Reboul,  Jean  Racine,  Jean  de  Beranger, 
Frederic  Bechard,  Gustave  Nadaud,  Edouard  Plouvier,  Eugene 
Manuel,  Hugo,  Millevoye,  Chenedolle,  James  Lacour  Delatre, 
Felix  Chavannes,  Francis-Edouard- Joachim,  known  as  Frangois 
Coppee,  and  Louis  Belmontet.  Christophe  was  lost,  drowned, 
submerged  under  such  a deluge  of  poetry  and  turned  to  prose. 

He  found  Gustave  de  Molinari,  Flechier,  Ferdinand-Edouarcl 
Buisson,  Merimee,  Malte-Brun,  Voltaire,  Lame-Fleury,  Dumas 


EEVOLT 


497 


pere,  J.-J.  Eousseau,  Mezieres,  Mirabeau,  de  Mazade,  Claretie, 
Cortambert,  Frederic  II,  and  M.  de  Vogue.  The  most 
often  quoted  of  French  historians  was  Maximilien  Samson- 
Frederic  Schcell.  In  the  French  anthology  Christophe 
found  the  Proclamation  of  the  New  German  Empire; 
and  he  read  a description  of  the  Germans  by  Fr^d^ric-Constant 
de  Eougemont,  in  which  he  learned  that  “ the  German  was  born 
to  live  in  the  region  of  the  soul.  He  has  not  the  light  noisy 
gaiety  of  the  Frenchman.  His  is  a great  soul;  his  affections  are 
tender  and  profound.  He  is  indefatigable  in  toil  and  persever- 
ing in  enterprise.  There  is  no  more  moral  or  long-lived  people. 
Germany  has  an  extraordinary  number  of  writers.  She  has  the 
genius  of  art.  While  the  inhabitants  of  other  countries  pride 
themselves  on  being  French,  English,  Spanish,  the  German  on 
the  other  hand  embraces  all  humanity  in  his  love.  And  though 
its  position  is  the  very  center  of  Europe  the  German  nation 
seems  to  be  at  once  the  heart  and  the  higher  reason  of 
humanity.” 

Christophe  closed  the  book.  He  was  astonished  and  tired. 
He  thought: 

“The  French  are  good  fellows;  but  they  are  not  strong.” 

He  took  another  volume.  It  was  on  a higher  plane : it  was 
meant  for  high  schools.  Musset  occupied  three  pages,  and 
Victor  Duruy  thirty,  Lamartine  seven  pages  and  Thiers  almost 
forty.  The  whole  of  the  Cid  was  included— or  almost  the 
.j^^hole;— (ten  monologues  of  Don  Diegue  and  Eodrigue  had 
been  suppressed  because  they  were  too  long.) — Lanfrey  exalted 
Prussia  against  Napoleon  I and  so  he  had  not  been  cut  down, 
he  alone  occupied  more  space  than  all  the  great  classics  of  the 
eighteenth  century.  Copious  narrations  of  the  French  defeats 
of  1870  had  been  extracted  from  La  Debacle  of  Zola.  Neither 
Montaigne,  nor  La  Eochefoucauld,  nor  La  Bruyere,  nor  Diderot, 
nor  Stendhal,  nor  Balzac,  nor  Flaubert  appeared.  On  the  other 
hand,  Pascal,  who  did  not  appear  in  the  other  book,  found  a 
place  in  this  as  a curiosity;  and  Christophe  learned  by  the 
way  that  the  convulsionary  “ was  one  of  the  fathers  of  Port- 
Royal,  a girls’  school,  near  Paris  . . 

‘The  anthologies  of  French  literature  which  Jean-Christophe  bor- 
rowed  from  his  friends  the  Reinharts  were : 


498 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


Christophe  was  on  the  point  of  throwing  the  book  away; 
his  head  was  swimming;  he  could  not  see.  He  said  to  himself: 

I shall  never  get  through  with  it.^^  He  could  not  formulate 
any  opinion.  He  turned  over  the  leaves  idly  for  hours  without 
knowing  what  he  was  reading.  He  did  not  read  French  easily, 
and  when  he  had  labored  to  make  out  a passage,  it  was  almost 
always  something  meaningless  and  highfalutin. 

And  yet  from  the  chaos  there  darted  flashes  of  light,  like 
rapier  thrusts,  words  that  looked  and  stabbed,  heroic  laughter. 
Gradually  an  impression  emerged  from  his  first  reading, 
perhaps  through  the  biased  scheme  of  the  selections.  Volun- 
tarily or  involuntarily  the  German  editors  had  selected  those 
pieces  of  French  which  could  seem  to  establish  by  the  testimony 
of  the  French  themselves  the  failings  of  the  French  and  the 
superiority  of  the  Germans.  But  they  had  no  notion  that  what 
they  most  exposed  to  the  eyes  of  an  independent  mind  like 
Christophers  was  the  surprising  liberty  of  these  Frenchmen 
who  criticised,  everything  in  their  own  country  and  praised 
their  adversaries.  Michelet  praised  Frederick  II,  Lanfrey  the 
English  of  Trafalgar,  Charras  the  Prussia  of  1813.  No  enemy 
of  Napoleon  had  ever  dared  to  speak  of  him  so  harshly.  Noth- 
ing was  too  greatly  respected  to  escape  their  disparagement. 
Even  under  the  great  King  the  previous  poets  had  had  their 
freedom  of  speech.  Molifere  spared  nothing.  La  Fontaine 
laughed  at  everything.  Even  Boileau  gibed  at  the  nobles.  Vol- 
taire derided  war,  flogged  religion,  scoffed  at  his  country.  Mor- 
alists, satirists,  pamphleteers,  comic  writers,  they  all  vied  one 
with  another  in  gay  or  somber  audacity.  Want  of  respect  was 
universal.  The  honest  German  editors  were  sometimes  scared 
by  it,  they  had  to  throw  a rope  to  their  consciences  by 
trying  to  excuse  Pascal,  who  lumped  together  cooks,  porters, 
soldiers,  and  camp  followers;  they  protested  in  a note  that 
Pascal  would  not  have  written  thus  if  he  had  been  acquainted 

I.  Selected  French  passages  for  the  use  of  secondary  schools,  by 
Hubert  H.  Wingerath,  Ph.  D.,  director  of  the  real-school  of  Saint  John 
at  Strasburg.  Part  II : Middle  forms. — 7th  Edition,  1902,  Dumont- 
Schauberg. 

II.  L.  Herrig  and  G.  F.  Biirguy:  Literary  France,  arransred  by  F. 
Tendering,  director  of  the  real-gymnasium  of  the  Johanneum, 
Hamburg. — 1904,  Brunswick. 


EEVOLT 


I 


499 


with  the  noble  armies  of  modern  times.  They  did  not  fail  to 
remind  the  reader  how  happily  Lessing  had  corrected  the 
Fables  of  La  Fontaine  by  following,  for  instance,  the  advice 
of  the  Genevese  Eonsseau  and  changing  the  piece  of  cheese  of 
Master  Crow  to  a piece  of  poisoned  meat  of  which  the  vile  fox 
dies. 

''May  you  never  gain  anything  hut  poison.  You  cursed 
flatterers!'' 

They  blinked  at  naked  truth;  but  Christophe  was  pleased  with 
it;  he  loved  this  light.  Here  and  there  he  was  even  a little 
shocked;  he  was  not  used  to  such  unbridled  independence 
which  looks  like  anarchy  to  the  eyes  even  of  the  freest  of 
Germans,  who  in  spite  of  everything  is  accustomed  to  order 
and  discipline.  And  he  was  led  astray  by  the  way  of  the 
French;  he  took  certain  things  too  seriously;  and  other  things 
which  were  implacable  denials  seemed  to  him  to  be  amusing 
paradoxes.  No  matter!  Surprised  or  shocked  he  was  drawn 
on  little  by  little.  He  gave  up  trying  to  classify  his  impres- 
sions; he  passed  from  one  feeling  to  another;  he  lived.  The 
gaiety  of  the  French  stories — Chamfort,  Segur,  Dumas  pere, 
Merimee  all  lumped  together — delighted  him;  and  every  now 
and  then  in  gusts  there  would  creep  forth  from  the  printed 
page  the  wild  intoxicating  scent  of  the  Eevolutions. 

It  was  nearly  4^wn  when  Louisa,  who  slept  in  the  next  room, 
woke  up  and  saw  the  light  through  the  chinks  of  Christophers 
door.  She  knocked  on  the  wall  and  asked  if  he  were  ill.  A 
chair  creaked  on  the  floor;  the  door  opened  and  Christophe 
appeared,  pale,  in  his  nightgown,  with  a candle  and  a book 
in  his  hand,  making  strange,  solemn,  and  grotesque  gestures. 
Louisa  was  in  terror  and  got  up  in  her  bed,  thinking  that  he 
was  mad.  He  began  to  laugh,  and,  waving  his  candle,  he  de- 
claimed a scene  from  Moliere.  In  the  middle  of  a sentence  he 
gurgled  with  laughter;  he  sat  at  the  foot  of  his  mother’s  bed 
to  take  breath;  the  candle  shook  in  his  hand.  Louisa  was  re- 
assured, and  scolded  him  forcibly : 

What  is  the  matter  with  you  ? What  is  it  ? Go  to  bed. 
. . . My  poor  boy,  are  you  going  out  of  your  senses  ? ” 

But  he  began  again : 

You  must  listen  to  this  I 


500 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


And  he  sat  by  her  bedside  and  read  the  play,  going  back  to 
the  beginning  again.  He  seemed  to  see  Corinne;  he  heard  her 
mocking  tones,  cutting  and  sonorous.  Louisa  protested: 

Go  away ! Go  away ! You  will  catch  cold.  How  tiresome 
you  are.  Let  me  go  to  sleep ! 

He  went  on  relentlessly.  He  raised  his  voice,  waved  his  arms, 
choked  with  laughter;  and  he  asked  his  mother  if  she  did  not 
think  it  wonderful.  Louisa  turned  her  back  on  him,  buried 
herself  in  the  bedclothes,  stopped  her  ears,  and  said : 

Do  leave  me  alone ! . . .^^ 

But  she  laughed  inwardly  at  hearing  his  laugh.  At  last  she 
gave  up  protesting.  And  when  Christophe  had  finished  the 
act,  and  asked  her,  without  eliciting  any  reply,  if  she  did  not 
think  what  he  had  read  interesting,  he  bent  over  her  and  saw 
that  she  was  asleep.  Then  he  smiled,  gently  kissed  her  hair, 
and  stole  back  to  his  own  room. 

He  borrowed  more  and  more  books  from  the  Eeinharts^ 
library.  There  were  all  sorts  of  books  in  it.  Christophe  de- 
voured them  all.  He  wanted  so  much  to  love  the  country  of 
Corinne  and  the  unknown  young  woman.  He  had  so  much 
enthusiasm  to  get  rid  of  that  he  found  a use  for  it  in  his 
reading.  Even  in  second-rate  works  there  were  sentences  and 
pages  which  had  the  effect  on  him  of  a gust  of  fresh  air.  He 
exaggerated  the  effect,  especially  when  he  was  talking  to  Frau 
Eeinhart,  who  always  went  a little  better  than  he.  Although 
she  was  as  ignorant  as  a fish,  she  delighted  to  contrast  French 
and  German  culture  and  to  decry  the  German  to  the  advan- 
tage of  the  French,  just  to  annoy  her  husband  and  to  avenge 
herself  for  the  boredom  she  had  to  suffer  in  the  little  town. 

Eeinhart  was  really  amused.  Notwithstanding  his  learning, 
he  had  stopped  short  at  the  ideas  he  had  learned  at  school.  To 
him  the  French  were  a clever  people,  skilled  in  practical  things, 
amiable,  talkative,  but  frivolous,  susceptible,  and  boastful,  in- 
capable of  being  serious,  or  sincere,  or  of  feeling  strongly — a 
people  without  music,  without  philosophy,  without  poetry  (ex- 
cept for  VArt  Poetique,  Beranger  and  Francois  Coppee) — a peo- 
ple of  pathos,  much  gesticulation,  exaggerated  speech,  and  por- 
nography. There  were  not  words  strong  enough  for  the  de- 


REVOLT 


501 


nunciation  of  Latin  immorality;  and  for  want  of  a better  he 
always  came  back  to  frivolity,  which  for  him,  as  for  the  ma- 
jority of  his  compatriots,  had  a particularly  unpleasant  mean- 
ing. And  he  would  end  with  the  usual  couplet  in  praise  of  the 
noble  German  people, — the  moral  people  By  that/*  Herder  has 
said,  it  is  distinguished  from  all  other  nations/*) — ^the  faith- 
ful people  {treues  Volk  , . . Treu  meaning  everything:  sin- 
cere, faithful,  loyal  and  upright) — the  People  par  excellence, 
as  Fichte  says — German  Force,  the  symbol  of  justice  and  truth 
— German  thought — the  German  Gemilt — ^the  German  language, 
the  only  original  language,  the  only  language  that,  like  the 
race  itself,  has  preserved  its  purity — German  women,  German 
wine,  German  song  . . . Germany,  Germany  above  everything 
in  the  world!  ** 

Christophe  would  protest.  Frau  Reinhart  would  cry  out. 
They  would  all  shout.  They  did  not  get  on  the  less  for  it. 
They  knew  quite  well  that  they  were  all  three  good  Germans. 

Christophe  used  often  to  go  and  talk,  dine  and  walk  with 
his  new  friends.  Lili  Reinhart  made  much  of  him,  and  used 
to  cook  dainty  suppers  for  him.  She  was  delighted  to  have  the 
excuse  for  satisfying  her  own  greediness.  She  paid  him  all 
sorts  of  sentimental  and  culinary  attentions.  For  Christophers 
birthday  she  made  a cake,  on  which  were  twenty  candles  and 
in  the  middle  a little  wax  figure  in  Greek  costume  which  was 
supposed  to  represent  Iphigenia  holding  a bouquet.  Chris- 
tophe, who  was  profoundly  German  in  spite  of  himself,  was 
touched  by  these  rather  blunt  and  not  very  refined  marks  of 
true  affection. 

The  excellent  Reinharts  found  other  more  subtle  ways  of 
showing  their  real  friendship.  On  his  wife^s  instigation 
Reinhart,  who  could  hardly  read  a note  of  music,  had  bought 
twenty  copies  of  Christophe’s  Lieder — (the  first  to  leave 
the  publisher’s  shop) — he  had  sent  them  to  different 
parts  of  Germany  to  university  acquaintances.  He  had 
also  sent  a certain  number  to  the  libraries  of  Leipzig 
and  Berlin,  with  which  he  had  dealings  through  his 
classbooks.  For  the  moment  at  least  their  touching  enter- 
! prise,  of  which  Christophe  knew  nothing,  bore  no  fruit.  The 
I Lieder  which  had  been  scattered  broadcast  seemed  to'miss  fire; 


502 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


nobody  talked  of  them;  and  the  Eeinharts,  who  were  hurt  by 
this  indifference,  were  glad  they  had  not  told  Christophe  about  • 
what  they  had  done,  for  it  would  have  given  him  more  pain 
than  consolation.  But  in  truth  nothing  is  lost,  as  so  often 
appears  in  life;  no  effort  is  in  vain.  For  years  nothing  hap- 
pens. Then  one  day  it  appears  that  your  idea  has  made  its 
way.  It  was  impossible  to  be  sure  that  Christophe’s  Lieder 
had  not  reached  the  hearts  of  a few  good  people  buried  in  the 
country,  who  were  too  timid  or  too  tired  to  tell  him  so. 

One  person  wrote  to  him. ' Two  or  three  months  after  the 
Eeinharts  had  sent  them,  a letter  came  for  Christophe.  It 
was  warm,  ceremonious,  enthusiastic,  old-fashioned  in  form, 
and  came  from  a little  town  in  Thuringia,  and  was  signed 
" Universitdts  Musilcdirelctor  Professor  Dr.  Peter  Schulz. 

It  was  a great  joy  for  Christophe,  and  even  greater  for  the 
Eeinharts,  when  at  their  house  he  opened  the  letter,  which  he  ' 
had  left  lying  in  his  pocket  for  two  days.  They  read  it  to- 
gether. Eeinhart  made  signs  to  his  wife  which  Christophe  did 
not  notice.  He  looked  radiant,  until  suddenly  Eeinhart  saw 
his  face  grow  gloomy,  and  he  stopped  dead  in  the  middle  of  his  , 
reading. 

“Well,  why  do  you  stop?”  he  asked. 

(They  used  the  familiar  du.) 

Christophe  flung  the  letter  on  the  table  angrily. 

“ No.  It  is  too  much ! ” he  said. 

“What  is?”  : 

“ Eead ! ” _ i 

He  turned,  away  and  went  and  sulked  in  a corner. 

Eeinhart  and  his  wife  read  the  letter,  and  could  find  in  it ; 
only  fervent  admiration.  ' 

“ I don’t  see,”  he  said  in  astonishment. 

“You  don’t  see?  You  don’t  see?  . . .”  cried  Christophe, 
taking  the  letter  and  thrusting  it  in  his  face.  “Can’t  you 
read?  Don’t  you  see  that  he  is  a ‘Brahmin' 

And  then  Eeinhart  noticed  that  in  one  sentence  the  Univer- 
sitdts  MusikdireMor  compared  Christophe’s  Lieder  with  those 
of  Brahms.  Christophe  moaned: 

A friend ! I have  found  a friend  at  last ! . . . And  I 
have  hardly  found  him  when  I have  lost  him ! . . .” 


KEVOLT 


503 


The  comparison  revolted  him.  If  they  had  let  him,  he 
rould  have  replied  with  a stupid  letter,  or  perhaps,  upon  re- 
lection,  he  would  have  thought  himself  very  prudent  and 
generous  in  not  replying  at  all.  Fortunately,  the  Reinharts 
vere  amused  by  his  ill-humor,  and  kept  him  from  committing 
my  further  absurdity.  They  succeeded  in  making  him  write 
i letter  of  thanks.  But  the  letter,  written  reluctantly,  was  cold 
ind  constrained.  The  enthusiasm  of  Peter  Schulz  was  not 
shaken  by  it.  He  sent  two  or  three  more  letters,  brimming 
)ver  with  affection.  Christophe  was  not  a good  correspondent, 
ind  although  he  was  a little  reconciled  to  his  unknown  friend 
)y  the  sincerity  and  real  sympathy  which  he  could  feel  behind 
bis  words,  he  ’''t  th<;  correspondence  drop.  Schulz  wrote  no 
more.  Christ' - h*':  never  thought  about  him. 

He  now  f the  Reinharts  every  day  and  frequently  several 
times  a d They  spent  almost  all  the  evenings  together. 

A.fter  spP7  / ; .g  the  day  alone  in  concentration  he  had  a physi- 
cal need  . ■ iking,  of  saying  everything  that  was  in  his  mind, 
even  if  ••  were  not  understood,  and  of  laughing  with  or  with- 
out reason,  of  expanding  and  stretching  himself. 

He  played  for  them.  Having  no  other  means  of  showing  his 
gra  lii'it , he  would  sit  at  the  piano  and  play  for  hours  to- 
ge  h-'V.  Frau  Reinhart  was  no  musician,  and  she  had  diffi- 
in  keeping  herself  from  yawning;  but  she  sympathized 
— 1 Christophe,  and  pretended  to  be  interested  in  everything 
> . layed.  Reinhart  was  not  much  more  of  a musician  than  his 
'"e,  but  was  sometimes  touched  quite  materially  by  certain 
aces  of  music,  certain  passages,  certain  bars,  and  then  he 
Yould  be  violently  moved  sometimes  even  to  tears,  and  that 
seemed  silly  to  him.  The  rest  of  the  time  he  felt  nothing ; it 
was  just  music  to  him.  That  was  the  general  rule.  He  was 
never  moved  except  by  the  least  good  passages  of  a composition 
—absolutely  insignificant  passages.  Both  of  them  persuaded 
themselves  that  they  understood  Christophe,  and  Christophe 
tried  to  pretend  that  it  was  so.  Every  now  and  then  he  would 
be  seized  by  a wicked  desire  to  make  fun  of  them.  He  would 
lay  traps  for  them  and  play  things  without  any  meaning,  inapt 
potpourris^  and  he  would  let  them  think  that  he  had  com- 


504 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


posed  them.  Then,  when  they  had  admired  it,  he  would  tell 
them  what  it  was.  Then  they  would  grow  wary,  and  when 
Christophe  played  them  a piece  with  an  air  of  mystery,  they 
would  imagine  that  he  was  trying  to  catch  them  again,  and 
they  would  criticise  it.  Christophe  would  let  them  go  on  and 
back  them  up,  and  argue  that  such  music  was  worthless,  and 
then  he  would  break  out: 

^^EascalsI  You  are  right!  ...  It  is  my  own!^^  He 
would  be  as  happy  as  a boy  at  having  taken  them  in.  Frau 
Eeinhart  would  be  cross  and  come  and  give  him  a little  slap; 
but  he  would  laugh  so  good-humoredly  that  they  would  laugh 
with  him.  They  did  not  pretend  to  be  infallible.  And  as 
they  had  no  leg  to  stand  on,  Lili  Eeinhart  would  criticise  every- 
thing and  her  husband  would  praise  everything^  and  so  they 
were  certain  that  one  or  other  of  them  wpnld  always  be  in 
agreement  with  Christophe. 

For  the  rest,  it  was  not  so  much  the  musician  that  attracted 


them  in  Christophe  as  the  crack-brained  boy,  with  his  affec- 
tionate ways  and  true  reality  of  life.  The  ill  that  they  had 
heard  spoken  of  him  had  rather  disposed  them  in  Ijis  favor. 
Like  him,  they  were  rather  oppressed  by  the  atmosphere  of  the; 
little  town ; like  him,  they  were  frank,  they  judged  for  them- 
selves, and  they  regarded  him  as  a great  baby,  not  vc  y clever 
in  the  ways  of  life,  and  the  victim  of  his  own  frankness. 

Christophe  was  not  under  many  illusions  concerning  his  new 
friends,  and  it  made  him  sad  to  think  that  they  did  not  under- 
stand the  depths  of  his  character,  and  that  they  would  never 
understand  it.  But  he  was  so  much  deprived  of  friendship  and;  ^ 
he  stood  in  such  sore  need  of  it,  that  he  was  infinitely  grateful  ■ 
to  them  for  wanting  to  like  him  a little.  He  had  learned 
wisdom  in  his  experiences  of  the  last  year ; he  no  longer 
thought  he  had  the  right  to  be  overwise.  Two  years  earlier 
he  would  not  have  been  so  patient.  He  remembered  with  amuse- 
ment and  remorse  his  severe  judgment  of  the  honest  and  tire- 
some Eulers ! Alas ! How  wisdom  had  grown  in  him ! He 
sighed  a little.  A secret  voice  whispered : Yes,  but  for  how 
long?^^  • 

That  made  him  smile  and  consoled  him  a little.  What 
would  he  not  have  given  to  have  a friend,  one  friend  who  \ 


EEVOLT 


505 


would  understand  him  and  share  his  soul!  But  although  he 
was  still  young  he  had  enough  experience  of  the  world  to  know 
that  his  desire  was  one  of  those  which  are  most  difficult  to 
realize  in  life,  and  that  he  could  not  hope  to  be  happier  than 
the  majority  of  the  true  artists  who  had  gone  before  him.  He 
had  learned  the  histories  of  some  of  them.  Certain  books,  bor- 
rowed from  the  Eeinharts,  had  told  him  about  the  terrible 
trials  through  which  the  German  musicians  of  the  seventeenth 
century  had  passed,  and  the  calmness  and  resolution  with  which 
one  of  these  great  souls — the  greatest  of  all,  the  heroic  Schiitz — 
had  striven,  as  unshakably  he  went  on  his  way  in  the  midst 
of  wars  and  burning  towns,  and  provinces  ravaged  by  the 
plague,  with  his  country  invaded,  trampled  underfoot  by  the 
hordes  of  all  Europe,  and — worst  of  all — ^broken,  worn  out, 
degraded  by  misfortune,  making  no  fight,  indifferent  to  every- 
thing, longing  only  for  rest.  He  thought : With  such  an 

example,  what  right  has  any  man  to  complain?  They  had 
no  audience,  they  had  no  future;  they  wrote  for  themselves  and 
God.  What  they  wrote  one  day  would  perhaps  be  destroyed 
by  the  next.  And  yet  they  went  on  writing  and  they  were  not 
sad.  Nothing  made  them  lose  their  intrepidity,  their  joviality. 
They  were  satisfied  with  their  song;  they  asked  nothing  of 
life  but  to  live,  to  earn  their  daily  bread,  to  express  their 
ideas,  and  to  find  a few  honest  men,  simple,  true,  not  artists, 
who  no  doubt  did  not  understand  them,  but  had  confidence  in 
them  and  won  their  confidence  in  return.  How  dared  he 
have  demanded  more  than  they?  There  is  a minimum  of  hap-t^" 
‘piness  which  it  is  permitted  to  demand.  But  no  man  has  the 
right  to  more;  it  rests  with  a man’s  self  to  gain  the  surplus  of 
happiness,  not  with  others.” 

Such  thoughts  brought  him  new  serenity,  and  he  loved  his 
good  friends  the  Eeinharts  the  more  for  them.  He  had  no 
idea  that  even  this  affection  was  to  be  denied  him. 

He  reckoned  without  the  malevolence  of  small  towns.  They 
are  tenacious  in  their  spite — all  the  more  tenacious  because  their 
spite  is  aimless.  A healthy  hatred  which  knows  what  it  wants 
is  appeased  when  it  has  achieved  its  end.  But  men  who  are 
mischievous  from  boredom  never  lay  down  their  arms,  for 


506 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


they  are  always  bored.  Christophe  was  a natural  prey  for  i 
their  want  of  occupation.  He  was  beaten  without  a doubt; 
but  he  was  bold  enough  not  to  seem  crushed.  He  did  not 
bother  anybody,  but  then  he  did  not  bother  about  anybody. 
He  asked  nothing.  They  were  impotent  against  him.  He 
was  happy  with  his  new  friends  and  indifferent  to  anything 
that  was  said  or  thought  of  him.  That  was  intolerable. — Frau 
Eeinhart  roused  even  more  irritation.  Her  open  friendship 
with  Christophe  in  the  face  of  the  whole  town  seemed,  like  his 
attitude,  to  be  a defiance  of  public  opinion.  But  the  good  Lili 
Eeinhart  defied  nothing  and  nobody.  She  had  no  thought  to 
provoke  others;  she  did  what  she  thought  fit  without  asking 
anybody  else’s  advice.  That  was  the  worst  provocation. 

All  their  doings  were  watched.  They  had  no  idea  of  it. 
He  was  extravagant,  she  scatter-brained,  and  both  even  want- 
ing in  prudence  when  they  went  out  together,  or  even  at  home 
in  the  evening,  when  they  leaned  over  the  balcony  talking  and  ■ 
laughing.  They  drifted  innocently  into  a familiarity  of  speech 
and  manner  which  could  easily  supply  food  for  calumny. 

One  morning  Christophe  received  an  anonymous  letter.  He 
was  accused  in  basely  insulting  terms  of  being  Frau  Eein-  ■ 
harCs  lover.  His  arms  fell  by  his  sides.  He  had  never  had 
the  least  thought  of  love  or  even  of  flirtation  with  her.  He 
was  too  honest.  He  had  a Puritanical  horror  of  adultery. 
The  very  idea  of  such  a dirty  sharing  gave  him  a physical  and 
moral  feeling  of  nausea.  To  take  the  wife  of  a friend  would  j 
have  been  a crime  in  his  eyes,  and  Lili  Eeinhart  would  have 
been  the  last  person  in  the  world  with  whom  he  could  have  ‘ 
been  tempted  to  commit  such  an  offense.  The  poor  woman  i 
was  not  beautiful,  and  he  would  not  have  had  even  the  excuse 
of  passion. 

He  went  to  his  friends  ashamed  and  embarrassed.  They 
also  were  embarrassed.  Each  of  them  had  received  a similar 
letter,  but  they  had  not  dared  to  tell  each  other,  and  all  three 
of  them  were  on  their  guard  and  watched  each  other  and  dared 
not  move  or  speak,  and  they  just  talked  nonsense.  If  Lili 
EeinharPs  natural  carelessness  took  the  ascendant  for  a mo- 
ment, or  if  she  began  to  laugh  and  talk  wildly,  suddenly  a 
look  from  her  husband  or  Christophe  would  stop  her  dead; 


EEVOLT 


5or 

the  letter  would  cross  her  mind;  she  would  stop  in  the  middle 
of  a familiar  gesture  and  grow  uneasy.  Christophe  and  Eeim 
hart  were  in  the  same  plight.  And  each  of  them  was  thinking : 

Do  the  others  know  ? 

However^  they  said  nothing  to  each  other  and  tried  -to  go 
on  as  though  nothing  had  happened. 

But  the  anonymous  letters  went  on,  growing  more  and  more 
insulting  and  dirty.  They  were  plunged  into  a condition  of 
depression  and  intolerable  shame.  They  hid  themselves  when 
they  received  the  letters,  and  had  not  the  strength  to  burn 
them  unopened.  They  opened  them  with  trembling  hands, 
and  as  they  unfolded  the  letters  their  hearts  would  sink;  and 
when  they  read  what  they  feared  to  read,  with  ^some  new  vari* 
ation  on  the  same  theme — the  injurious  and  ignoble  inven- 
tions of  a mind  bent  on  causing  a hurt — ^they  wept  in  silence. 
They  racked  their  brains  to  discover  who  the  wretch  might  be 
who  so  persistently  persecuted  them. 

One  day  Frau  Eeinhart,  at  the  end  of  her  letter,  confessed 
the  persecution  of  which  she  was  the  victim  to  her  husband, 
and  with  tears  in  his  eyes  he  confessed  that  he  was  suffering 
in  the  same  way.  Should  they  mention  it  to  Christophe? 
They  dared  not.  But  they  had  to  warn  him  to  make  him  be 
cautious. — At  the  first  words  that  Frau  Eeinhart  said  to  him, 
with  a blush,  she  saw  to  her  horror  that  Christophe  had  also 
received  letters.  Such  utter  malignance  appalled  them.  Frau 
Eeinhart  had  no  doubt  that  the  whole  town  was  in  the  secret. 
Instead  of  helping  each  other,  they  only  undermined  each 
other’s  fortitude.  They  did  not  know  what  to  do.  Chris- 
tophe talked  of  breaking  somebody’s  head. — But  whose?  And 
besides,  that  would  be  to  justify  the  calumny!  . . . Inform 
the  police  of  the  letters? — That  would  make  their  insinuations 
public.  . . . Pretend  to  ignore  them?  It  was  no  longer  pos- 
sible. Their  friendly  relations  were  now  disturbed.  It  was 
i useless  for  Eeinhart  to  have  absolute  faith  in  the  honesty  of 
I his  wife  and  Christophe.  He  suspected  them  in  spite  of  him- 
self. He  felt  that  his  suspicions  were  shameful  and  absurd, 
1 and  tried  hard  not  to  pay  any  heed  to  them,  and  to  leave  Chris- 
i tophe  and  his  wife  alone  together.  But  he  suffered,  and  hU 
wife  saw  that  he  was  suffering. 


508 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


It  was  even  worse  for  her.  She  had  never  thought  of  flirt- 
ing with  Christophe,  any  more  than  he  had  thought  of  it  with 
her.  The  calumnious  letters  brought  her  imperceptibly  to  the 
ridiculous  idea  that  after  all  Christophe  was  perhaps  in  love 
with  her;  and  although  he  was  never  anywhere  near  showing 
any  such  feeling  for  her,  she  thought  she  must  defend  herself, 
not  by  referring  directly  to  it,  but  by  clumsy  precautions, 
which  Christophe  did  not  understand  at  first,  though,  when  he 
did  understand,  he  was  beside  himself.  It  was  so  stupid  that 
it  made  him  laugh  and  cry  at  the  same  time!  He  in  love 
with  the  honest  little  woman,  kind  enough  , as  she  was,  but 
plain  and  common!  . . . And  to  think  that  she  should  be- 
lieve it!  . . . And  that  he  could  not  deny  it,  and  tell  her 
and  her  husband: 

Come ! There  is  no  danger ! Be  calm ! . . .’^  But  no ; 
he  could  not  offend  these  good  people.  And  besides,  he  was 
beginning  to  think  that  if  she  held  out  against  being  loved  by 
him  it  was  because  she  was  secretly  on  the  point  of  loving  him. 
The  anonymous  letters  had  had  the  fine  result  of  having  given 
him  so  foolish  and  fantastic  an  idea. 

The  situation  had  become  at  once  so  painful  and  so  silly 
that  it  was  impossible  for  this  to  go  on.  Besides,  Lili  Kein- 
hart,  who,  in  spite  of  her  brave  words,  had  no  strength  of 
character,  lost  her  head  in  the  face  of  the  dumb  hostility  of 
the  little  town.  They  made  shamefaced  excuses  for  not 
meeting : 

Frau  Eeinhart  was  unwell.  . . . Eeinhart  was  busy.  . . . 
They  were  going  away  for  a few  days.  . . 

Clumsy  lies  which  were  always  unmasked  by  chance,  which 
seemed  to  take  a malicious  pleasure  in  doing  so. 

Christophe  was  more  frank,  and  said: 

Let  us  part,  my  friends.  We  are  not  strong  enough.^^ 

The  Eeinharts  wept. — But  they  were  happier  when  the  breach 
was  made. 

The  town  had  its  triumph.  This  time  Christophe  was  quite 
alone.  It  had  robbed  him  of  his  last  breath  of  air: — the  af- 
fection, however  humble,  without  which  no  heart  can  live. 


KEVOLT 


509 


III 

DELIVERAlSrCE 

He  had  no  one.  All  his  friends  had  disappeared.  His  dear 
Gottfried,  who  had  come  to  his  aid  in  times  of  difficulty,  and 
whom  now  he  so  sorely  needed,  had  gone  some  months  before. 
This  time  forever.  One  evening  in  the  summer  of  the  last  year  a 
letter  in  large  handwriting,  bearing  the  address  of  a distant  vil- 
lage, had  informed  Louisa  that  her  brother  had  died  upon  one  of 
his  vagabond  journeys  which  the  little  peddler  had  insisted 
on  making,  in  spite  of  his  ill  health.  He  was  buried  there  in 
the  cemetery  of  the  place.  The  last  manly  and  serene  friend- 
ship which  could  have  supported  Christophe  had  been  swal- 
lowed up.  He  was  left  alone  with  his  old  mother,  who  cared 
nothing  for  his  ideas — could  only  love  him  and  not  understand 
him.  About  him  was  the  immense  plain  of  Germany,  the 
green  ocean.  At  every  attempt  to  climb  out  of  it  he  only 
slipped  back  deeper  than  ever.  The  hostile  town  watched  him 
drown.  ... 

And  as  he  was  struggling  a light  flashed  upon  him  in  the 
middle  of  the  night,  the  image  of  Hassler,  the  great  musician 
whom  he  had  loved  so  much  when  he  was  a child.  His  fame 
shone  over  all  Germany  now.  He  remembered  the  promises 
that  Hassler  had  made  him  then.  And  he  clung  to  this  piece 
of  wreckage  in  desperation.  Hassler  could  save  him ! Hassler 
must  save  him!  What  was  he  asking?  Not  help,  nor  money, 
nor  material  assistance  of  any  kind.  Nothing  but  understand- 
ing. Hassler  had  been  persecuted  like  him.  Hassler  was  a 
free  man.  He  would  understand  a free  man,  whom  German 
mediocrity  was  pursuing  with  its  spite  and  trying  to  crush.* 
They  were  fighting  the  same  battle. 

He  carried  the  idea  into  execution  as  soon  as  it  occurred 
to  him.  He  told  his  mother  that  he  would  be  away  for  a 
week,  and  that  very  evening  he  took  the  train  for  the  great 


510 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


town  in  the  north  of  Germany  where  Hassler  was  Kapellmeister. 
He  could  not  wait.  It  was  a last  effort  to  breathe. 

Hassler  was  famous.  His  enemies  had  not  disarmed,  but  his 
friends  cried  that  he  was  the  greatest  musician,  present,  past 
and  future.  He  was  surrounded  by  partisans  and  detractors  who 
were  equally  absurd.  As  he  was  not  of  a very  firm  character, 
he  had  been  embittered  by  the  last,  and  mollified  by  the  first. 
He  devoted  his  energy  to  writing  things  to  annoy  his  critics 
and  make  them  cry  out.  He  was  like  an  urchin  playing  pranks. 
These  pranks  were  often  in  the  most  detestable  taste.  Not 
only  did  he  devote  his  prodigious  talent  to  musical  eccentrici- 
ties which  made  the  hair  of  the  pontiffs  stand  on  end,  but  he 
showed  a perverse  predilection  for  queer  themes,  bizarre  sub- 
jects, and  often  for  equivocal  and  scabrous  situations;  in  a 
word,  for  everything  which  could  offend  ordinary  good  sense  ■ 
and  decency.  He  was  quite  happy  when  the  people  howled,  , 
and  the  people  did  not  fail  him.  Even  the  Emperor,  who 
dabbled  in  art,  as  every  one  knows,  with  the  insolent  presump-  ; 
tion  of  upstarts  and  princes,  regarded  HasslePs  fame  as  a 
public  scandal,  and  let  no  opportunity  slip  of  showing  his  ’ 
contemptuous  indifference  to  his  impudent  works.  Hassler  ; 
was  enraged  and  delighted  by  such  august  opposition,  which 
had  almost  become  a consecration  for  the  advanced  paths  in 
German  art,  and  went  on  smashing  windows.  At  every  new  ! 
folly  his  friends  went  into  ecstasies  and  cried  that  he  was  a , 
genius. 

Hassler^s  coterie  was  chiefly  composed  of  writers,  painters, 
and  decadent  critics  who  certainly  had  the  merit  of  represent-  < 
ing  the  party  of  revolt  against  the  reaction — always  a menace  in  ! 
North  Germany — of  the  pietistic  spirit  and  State  morality; 
but  in  the  struggle  the  independence  had  been  carried  to  a 
pitch  of  absurdity  of  which  they  were  unconscious.  For,  if 
many  of  them  were  not  lacking  in  a rude  sort  of  talent,  they 
had  little  intelligence  and  less  taste.  They  could  not  rise  above 
the  fastidious  atmosphere  which  they  had  created,  and  like 
all  cliques,  they  had  ended  by  losing  all  sense  of  real  life. 
They  legislated  for  themselves  and  hundreds  of  fools  who  read 
their  reviews  and  gulped  down  everything  they  were  pleased  to 


EEVOLT 


511 


promulgate.  Their  adulation  had  been  fatal  to  Hassler,  for  it 
had  made  him  too  pleased  with  himself.  He  accepted  without 
examination  every  musical  idea  that  came  into  his  head,  and 
he  had  a private  conviction,  however  he  might  fall  below  his 
own  level,  he  was  still  superior  to  that  of  all  other  musicians. 
And  though  that  idea  was  only  too  true  in  the  majority  of 
cases,  it  did  not  follow  that  it  was  a very  fit  state  of  mind 
for  the  creation  of  great  works.  At  heart  Hassler  had  a 
supreme  contempt  for  everybody,  friends  and  enemies  alike; 
and  this  bitter  jeering  contempt  was  extended  to  himself  and  life 
in  general.  He  was  all  the  more  driven  back  into  his 
ironic  skepticism  because  he  had  once  believed  in  a number 
of  generous  and  simple  things.  As  he  had  not  been  strong 
enough  to  ward  off  the  slow  destruction  of  the  passing  of  the 
days,  nor  hypocritical  enough  to  pretend  to  believe  in  the 
faith  he  had  lost,  he  was  forever  gibing  at  the  memory  of  it. 
He  was  of  a Southern  German  nature,  soft  and  indolent,  not 
made  to  resist  excess  of  fortune  or  misfortune,  of  heat  or  cold, 
needing  a moderate  temperature  to  preserve  its  balance.  He 
had  drifted  insensibly  into  a lazy  enjoyment  of  life.  He  loved 
good  food,  heavy  drinking,  idle  lounging,  and  sensuous  thoughts. 
His  whole  art  smacked  of  these  things,  although  he  was  too 
gifted  for  the  flashes  of  his  genius  not  still  to  shine  forth  from 
his  lax  music  which  drifted  with  the  fashion.  No  one  was 
more  conscious  than  himself  of  his  decay.  In  truth,  he  was 
the  only  one  to  be  conscious  of  it — at  rare  moments  which, 
naturally,  he  avoided.  Besides,  he  was  misanthropic,  absorbed 
by  his  fearful  moods,  his  egoistic  preoccupations,  his  concern 
about  his  health— he  was  indifferent  to  everything  which  had 
formerly  excited  his  enthusiasm  or  hatred. 

Such  was  the  man  to  whom  Christophe  came  for  assistance. 
With  what  joy  and  hope  he  arrived,  one  cold,  wet  morning, 
in  the  town  wherein  then  lived  the  man  who  symbolized  for 
him  the  spirit  of  independence  in  his  art!  He  expected  words 
of  friendship  and  encouragement  from  him — words  that  he 
needed  to  help  him  to  go  on  with  the  ungrateful,  inevitable 
battle  which  every  true  artist  has  to  wage  against  the  world 
; until  he  breathes  his  last,  without  even  for  one  day  laying 


512 


JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 


down  his  arms ; for,  as  Schiller  has  said,  the  only  relation 
with  the  public  of  which  a man  never  repents^ — is  war/' 

Christophe  was  so  impatient  that  he  just  left  his  bag  at 
the  first  hotel  he  came  to  near  the  station,  and  then  ran  tn 
the  theater  to  find  out  HasslePs  address.  Hassler  lived  some  j 
way  from  the  center  of  the  town,  in  one  of  the  suburbs.  Chris-  | 
tophe  took  an  electric  train,  and  hungrily  atb  a roll.  His  heart 
thumped  as  he  approached  his  goal. 

The  district  in  which  Hassler  had  chosen  his  house  was 
almost  entirely  built  in  that  strange  new  architecture  into 
which  young  Germany  has  thrown  an  erudite  and  deliberate 
barbarism  struggling  laboriously  to  have  genius.  In  the  middle 
of  the  commonplace  town,  with  its  straight,  characterless- 
streets,  there  suddenly  appeared  Egyptian  hypogea,  Norwegian 
chalets,  cloisters,  bastions,  exhibition  pavilions,  pot-bellied 
houses,  fakirs,  buried  in  the  ground,  with  expressionless  faces,, 
with  only  one  enormous  eye;  dungeon  gates,  ponderous  gates,,  j 
iron  hoops,  golden  cryptograms  on  the  panes  of  grated  windows,.  \ 
belching  monsters  over  the  front  door,  blue  porcelain  tiles  ' 
plastered  on  in  most  unexpected  places;  variegated  mosaics  rep-  ; 
resenting  Adam  and  Eve;  roofs  covered  with  tiles  of  jarring  ^ 
colors;  houses  like  citadels  with  castellated  walls,  deformed  ■ 
animals  on  the  roofs,  no  windows  on  one  side,  and  then  sud-  | 
denly,  close  to  each  other,  gaping  holes,  square,  red,  angular,  j 
triangular,  like  wounds;  great  stretches  of  empty  wall  from  ; 
which  suddenly  there  would  spring  a massive  balcony  with  one  / 
window — a balcony  supported  by  Nibelungesque  Caryatides,  bal-  | 
conies  from  which  there  peered  thraugh  the  stone  balustrade  \ 
two  pointed  heads  of  old  men,  bearded  and  long-haired,  mer- 
men  of  Boecklin.  On  the  front  of  one  of  these  prisons — a Pha-  ; 
raohesque  mansion,  low  and  one-storied,  with  two  naked  giants 
at  the  gate — ^the  architect  had  written: 

Let  the  artist  show  his  universe, 

Which  never  was  and  yet  will  ever  be. 

Seine  Welt  zeige  der  Kiinstler, 

Die  niemals  war  noch  jemals  sein  wird. 

Christophe  was  absorbed  by  the  idea  of  seeing  Hassler,  and 
looked  with  the  eyes  of  amazement  and  under  no  attempt  to 


EEVOLT 


513 


understand.  He  reached  the  house  he  sought,  one  of  the 
simplest — in  a Carolingian  style.  Inside  was  rich  luxury,  com- 
monplace enough.  On  the  staircase  was  the  heavy  atmosphere 
of  hot  air.  There  was  a small  lift  which  Christophe  did  not  use, 
as  he  wanted  to  gain  time  to  prepare  himself  for  his  call  by  go- 
ing up  the  four  flights  of  stairs  slowly,  with  his  legs  giving  and 
his  heart  thumping  with  his  excitement.  During  that  short 
ascent  his  former  interview  with  Hassler,  his  childish  enthu- 
siasm, the  image  of  his  grandfather  were  as  clearly  in  his  mind 
as  though  it  had  all  been  yesterday. 

It  was  nearly  eleven  when  he  rang  the  hell.  He  was  received 
by  a sharp  maid,  with  a serva  padrona  manner,  who  looked  at 
him  impertinently  and  began  to  say  that  “ Herr  Hassler  could 
not  see  him,  as  Herr  Hassler  was  tired.”  Then  the  naive  dis- 
appointment expressed  in  Christophe’s  face  amused  her;  for 
after  making  an  unabashed  scrutiny  of  him  from  head  to  foot, 
she  softened  suddenly  and  introduced  him  to  Hassler’s  study, 
and  said  she  would  go  and  see  if  Herr  Hassler  would  receive 
him.  Thereupon  she  gave  him  a little  wink  and  closed  the 
door. 

On  the  walls  were  a few  impressionist  paintings  and  some 
gallant  French  engravings  of  the  eighteenth  century : for 
Hassler  pretended  to  some  knowledge  of  all  the  arts,  and 
Manet  and  Watteau  were  joined  together  in  his  taste  in  accord- 
ance with  the  prescription  of  his  coterie.  The  same  mixture  of 
styles  appeared  in  the  furniture,  and  a very  flne  Louis  XV 
bureau  was  surrounded  by  new  art  armchairs  and  an  oriental 
divan  with  a mountain  of  multi-colored  cushions.  The  doors 
were  ornamented  with  mirrors,  and  J apanese  bric-a-brac  covered 
the  shelves  and  the  mantelpiece,  on  which  stood  a bust  of 
Hassler.  In  a bowl  on  a round  table  was  a profusion  of  photo- 
graphs of  singers,  female  admirers  and  friends,  with  witty 
remarks  and  enthusiastic  interjections.  The  bureau  was  in- 
credibly untidy.  The  piano  was  open.  The  shelves  were 
dusty,  and  half-smoked  cigars  were  lying  about  everywhere. 

In  the  next  room  Christophe  heard  a cross  voice  gruinbling. 
It  was  answered  by  the  shrill  tones  of  the  little  maid.  It 
was  clear  that  Hassler  was  not  very  pleased  at  having  to  ap- 
pear. It  was  clear,  also,  that  the  young  woman  had  decided 


514  JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 

that  Hassler  should  appear;  and  she  answered  him  with  ex- 
treme familiarity  and  her  shrill  voice  penetrated  the  walls,  j 
Christophe  was  rather  upset  at  hearing  some  of  the  remarks 
she  made  to  her  master.  But  Hassler  did  not  seem  to  mind. 
On  the  contrary,  it  rather  seemed  as  though  her  impertinence 
amused  him;  and  while  he  went  on  growling,  he  chaffed  the 
girl  and  took  a delight  in  exciting  her.  At  last  Christophe 
heard  a door  open,  and,  still  growling  and  chaffing,  Hassler 
came  shuffling. 

He  entered.  Christophers  heart  sank.  He  recognized  him. 
Would  to  God  he  had  not ! It  was  Hassler,  and  yet  it  was  not 
he.  He  still  had  his  great  smooth  brow,  his  face  as  unwrinkled 
as  that  of  a babe;  but  he  was  bald,  stout,  yellowish,  sleepy- 
looking;  his  lower  lip  drooped  a little,  his  mouth  looked  bored 
and  sulky.  He  hunched  his  shoulders,  buried  his  hands  in 
the  pockets  of  his  open  waistcoat ; old  shoes  flopped  on  his  feet ; ' 

his  shirt  was  bagged  above  his  trousers,  which  he  had  not 

finished  buttoning.  He  looked  at  Christophe  with  his  sleepy 
eyes,  in  which  there  was  no  light  as  the  young  man  ipurmured 
his  name.  He  bowed  automatically,  said  nothing,  nodded 
towards  a chair,  and  with  a sigh,  sank  down  on  the  divan  and  ^ 
piled  the  cushions  about  himself.  Christophe  repeated: 

I have  already  had  the  honor  ...  You  were  kind  enough 
. . . My  name  is  Christophe  Krafft.  . . 

Hassler  lay  back  on  the  divan,  with  his  legs  crossed,  his  . 

hands  clasped  together  on  his  right  knee,  which  he  held  up  • 

to  his  chin  as  he  replied : ] 

I don^t  remember.’^  '< 

Christophers  throat  went  dry,  and  he  tried  to  remind  him  : 
of  their  former  meeting.  Under  any  circumstances  it  would  ! 
have  been  difficult  for  him  to  talk  of  memories  so  intimate; 
now  it  was  torture  for  him.  He  bungled  his  sentences,  could 
not  find  words,  said  absurd  things  which  made  him  blush. 
Hassler  let  him  flounder  on  and  never  ceased  to  look  at  him 
with  his  vague,  indifferent  eyes.  When  Christophe  had  reached 
the  end  of  his  story,  Hassler  went  on  rocking  his  knee  in 
silence  for  a moment,  as  though  he  were  waiting  for  Chris- 
tophe to  go  on.  Then  he  said: 


515 


EEVOLT 

"Yes  . . . That  does  not  make  us  young  again  . . and 
stretched  his  legs. 

After  a yawn  he  added : 

"...  I beg  pardon  . . . Did  not  sleep  . . . Supper  at  the 
theater  last  night  . . .”  and  yawned  again. 

Christophe  hoped  that  Hassler  would  make  some  reference 
to  what  he  had  just  told  him,  but  Hassler,  whom  the  story 
had  not  interested  at  all,  said  nothing  about  it,  and  he  did  not 
ask  Christophe  anything  about  his  life.  When  he  had  done 
yawning  he  asked; 

" Have  you  been  in  Berlin  long  ? ” 

" I arrived  this  morning,”  said  Christophe. 

" Ah ! ” said  Hassler,  without  any  surprise.  " What  hotel?  ” 

He  did  not  seem  to  listen  to  the  reply,  but  got  up  lazily  and 
pressed  an  electric  bell. 

" Allow  me,”  he  said. 

The  little  maid  appeared  with  her  impertinent  manner. 

" Kitty,”  said  he,  " are  you  trying  to  make  me  go  without 
breakfast  this  morning?” 

"You  don’t  think  I am  going  to  bring  it  here  while  you 
have  some  one  with  you  ? ” 

"Why  not?”  he  said,  with  a wink  and  a nod  in  Chris- 
tophe’s  direction.  “ He  feeds  my  mind : I must  feed  my 
body.” 

" Aren’t  you  ashamed  to  have  some  one  watching  you  eat — 
like  an  animal  in  a menagerie  ? ” 

Instead  of  being  angry,  Hassler  began  to  laugh  and  cor- 

rGct6(i  liGr  * 

" Like  a domestic  animal,”  he  went  on.  " But  do  bring  it. 
I’ll  eat  my  shame  with  it.” 

Christophe  saw  that  Hassler  was  making  no  attempt  to  find 
out  what  he  was  doing,  and  tried  to  lead  the  conversation  back. 
He  spoke  of  the  difficulties  of  provincial  life,  of  the  mediocrity 
of  the  people,  the  narrow-mindedness,  and  of  his  own  isolation. 
He  tried  to  interest  him  in  his  moral  distress.  But  Hassler 
was  sunk  deep  in  the  divan,  with  his  head  lying  hack  on  a 
cushion  and  his  eyes  half  closed,  and  let  him  go  on  talking 
without  even  seeming  to  listen;  or  he  would  raise  his  eyelids 


516 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


for  a moment  and  pronounce  a few  coldly  ironical  words,  some 
ponderous  jest  at  the  expense  of  provincial  people,  which  cut 
short  Christophe’s  attempts  to  talk  more  intimately.  Kitty 
returned  with  the  breakfast  tray : coffee,  butter,  ham,  etc.  She 
put  it  down  crossly  on  the  desk  in  the  middle  of  the  untidy 
papers.  Christophe  waited  until  she  bad  gone  before  he  went 
on  with  his  sad  story  which  he  had  such  difficulty  in  continu- 
ing. Hassler  drew  the  tray  towards  himself.  He  poured  him- 
self out  some  coffee  and  sipped  at  it.  Then  in  a familiar  and 
cordial  though  rather  contemptuous  way  he  stopped  Christophe 
in  the  middle  of  a sentence  to  ask  if  he  would  take  a cup. 

Christophe  refused.  He  tried  to  pick  up  the  thread  of  his 
sentence,  but  he  was  more  and  more  nonplussed,  and  did  not 
know  what  he  was  saying.  He  was  distracted  by  the  sight  of 
Hassler  with  his  plate  under  his  chin,  like  a child,  gorging 
pieces  of  bread  and  butter  and  slices  of  ham  which  he  held  in 
his  fingers.  However,  he  did  succeed  in  saying  that  he  com- 
posed, that  he  had  had  an  overture  in  the  J uditli  of  Hebbel  per- 
formed. Hassler  listened  absently. 

"Was?”  (What?)  he  asked. 

Christophe  repeated  the  title. 

" Ach!  So,  so!”  (Ah!  Good,  good!)  said  Hassler,  dip- 
ping his  bread  and  his  fingers  into  his  cup.  That  was  all. 

Christophe  was  discouraged  and  was  on  the  point  of  getting 
up  and  going,  but  he  thought  of  his  long  journey  in  vain,  and 
summoning  up  all  his  courage  he  murmured  a proposal  that  he 
should  play  some  of  his  works  to  Hassler.  At  the  first  mention 
of  it  Hassler  stopped  him. 

“ No,  no.  I don’t  know  anything  about  it,”  he  said,  with  his 
chaffing  and  rather  insulting  irony.  “Besides,  I haven’t  the 
time.” 

Tears  came  to  Christophe’s  eyes.  But  he  had  vowed  not  to 
leave  until  he  had  Hassler’s  opinion  about  his  work.  He  said, 
with  a mixture  of  confusion  and  anger : 

“ I beg  your  pardon,  but  you  promised  once  to  hear  me. 
I came  to  see  you  for  that  from  the  other  end  of  Germany. 
You  shall  hear  me.”  , 

Hassler,  who  was  not  used  to  such  ways,  looked  at  the  awk- 
ward young  man,  who  was  furious,  blushing,  and  near  tears. 


EEVOLT 


517 


That  amused  him,  and  wearily  shrugging  his  shoulders,  he 
pointed  to  the  piano,  and  said  with  an  air  of  comic  resignation : 

“ Well,  then ! . . . There  you  are ! ” 

On  that  he  lay  back  on  his  divan,  like  a man  who  is  going 
to  sleep,  smoothed  out  his  cushions,  put  them  under  his  out- 
stretched arms,  half  closed  his  eyes,  opened  them  for  a mo- 
ment to  take  stock  of  the  size  of  the  roll  of  music  which  Chris- 
tophe  had  brought  from  one  of  his  pockets,  gave  a little  sigh, 
and  lay  back  to  listen  listlessly. 

Christophe  was  intimidated  and  mortified,  but  he  began  to 
play.  It  was  not  long  before  Hassler  opened  his  eyes  and  ears 
with  the  professional  interest  of  the  artist  who  is  struck  in 
spite  of  himself  by  a beautiful  thing.  At  first  he  said  nothing 
and  lay  still,  but  his  eyes  became  less  dim  and  his  sulky  lips 
moved.  Then  he  suddenly  woke  up,  growling  his  surprise  and 
approbation.  He  only  gave  inarticulate  interjections,  but  the 
form  of  them  left  no  doubt  as  to  his  feelings,  and  they  gave 
Christophe  an  inexpressible  pleasure.  Hassler  forgot  to  count 
the  number  of  pages  that  had  been  played  and  were  left  to  be 
played.  When  Christophe  had  finished  a piece,  he  said : 

“ Go  on ! . . . Go  on ! . . .” 

He  was  beginning  to  use  human  language. 

“ That’s  good ! Good ! ” he  exclaimed  to  himself.  “ Fa- 
mous! . . . Awfully  famous!  (Sclirechlich  famos!)  But, 
■damme ! ” He  growled  in  astonishment.  “ What  is  it  ? ” 

He  had  risen  on  his  seat,  was  stretching  for  wind,  making 
a trumpet  with  his  hand,  talking  to  himself,  laughing  with 
pleasure,  or  at  certain  odd  harmonies,  just  putting  out  his 
tongue  as  though  to  moisten  his  lips.  An  unexpected  modu- 
lation had  such  an  effect  on  him  that  he  got  up  suddenly  with 
an  exclamation,  and  came  and  sat  at  the  piano  by  Christophe’s 
side.  He  did  not  seem  to  notice  that  Christophe  was  there. 
He  was  only  concerned  with  the  music,  and  when  the  piece 
was  finished  he  took  the  book  and  began  to  read  the  page  again, 
then  the  following  pages,  and  went  on  ejaculating  his  admira- 
tion and  surprise  as  though  he  had  been  alone  in  the  room. 

“The  devil!”  he  said.  “Where  did  the, little  beast  find 
that?  ...” 

He  pushed  Christophe  away  with  his  shoulders  and  himself 


518 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


played  certain  passages.  He  had  a charming  touch  on  the 
piano,  very  soft,  caressing  and  light.  Christophe  noticed  his 
fine  long,  well-tended  hands,  which  were  a little  morbidly  aris- 
tocratic and  out  of  keeping  with  the  rest.  Hassler  stopped  at 
certain  chords  and  repeated  them,  winking,  and  clicking  with  his 
tongue.  He  hummed  with  his  lips,  imitating  the  sounds  of 
the  instruments,  and  went  on  interspersing  the  music  with  his 
apostrophes  in  which  pleasure  and  annoyance  were  mingled. 
He  could  not  help  having  a secret  initiative,  an  unavowed 
jealousy,  and  at  the  same  time  he  greedily  enjoyed  it  all. 

Although  he  went  on  talking  to  himself  as  though  Chris- 
tophe did  not  exist,  Christophe,  blushing  with  pleasure,  could 
not  help  taking  Hassler’s  exclamations  to  himself,  and  he  ex- 
plained what  he  had  tried  to  do.  At  first  Hassler  seemed  not 
to  pay  any  attention  to  what  the  young  man  was  saying,  and 
went  on  thinking  out  loud;  then  something  that  Christophe 
said  struck  him  and  he  was  silent,  with  his  eyes  still  fixed  on 
the  music,  which  he  turned  over  as  he  listened  without  seeming 
to  hear.  Christophe  grew  more  and  more  excited,  and  at  last 
he  plumped  into  confidence,  and  talked  with  naive  enthu- 
siasm about  his  projects  and  his  life. 


V 


Hassler  was  silent,  and  as  he  listened  he  slipped  back  into  j 
his  irony.  He  had  let  Christophe  take  the  book  from  his 
hands;  with  his  elbow  on  the  rack  of  the  piano  and  his  hand  ; 
on  his  forehead,  he  looked  at  Christophe,  who  was  explaining  ; 
his  work  with  youthful  ardor  and  eagerness.  And  he  smiled  i 
bitterly  as  he  thought  of  his  own  beginning,  his  own  hopes,  j 
and  of  Christophers  hopes,  and  all  the  disappointments  that  lay  \ 
in  wait  for  him. 

Christophe  spoke  with  his  eyes  cast  down,  fearful  of  losing  i 
the  thread  of  what  he  had  to  say.  Hassler^s  silence  encour- 
aged him.  He  felt  that  Hassler  was  watching  him  and  not 
missing  a word  that  he  said,  and  he  thought  he  had  broken 
the  ice  between  them,  and  he  was  glad  at  heart.  When  he  had 
finished  he  shyly  raised  his  head — confidently,  too — and  looked 
at  Hassler.  All  the  joy  welling  in  him  was  frozen  on  the 
instant,  like  too  early  birds,  when  he  saw  the  gloomy,  mocking 
eyes  that  looked  into  his  without  kindness.  He  was  silent. 

After  an  icy  moment,  Hassler  spoke  dully.  He  had  changed 


EEVOLT 


519 


once  more;  he  affected  a sort  of  harshness  towards  the  young 
man.  He  teased  him  cruelly  about  his  plans,  his  hopes  of 
success,  as  though  he  were  trying  to  chaff  himself,  now  that  he 
had  recovered  himself.  He  set  himself  coldly  to  destroy  his 
faith  in  life,  his  faith  in  art,  his  faith  in  himself.  Bitterly 
he  gave  himself  as  an  example,  speaking  of  his  actual  works 
in  an  insulting  fashion. 

Hog- waste ! he  said.  That  is  what  these  swine  want. 
Do  you  think  there  are  ten  people  in  the  world  who  love  music  ? 
Is  there  a single  one?^^ 

There  is  myself ! said  Christophe  emphatically.  Hassler 
looked  at  him,  shrugged  his  shoulders,  and  said  wearily: 

You  will  be  like  the  rest.  You  will  do  as  the  rest  have 
done.  You  will  think  of  success,  of  amusing  yourself,  like  the 
rest.  . . . And  you  will  be  right.  . . P 

Christophe  tried  to  protest,  but  Hassler  cut  him  short;  he 
took  the  music  and  began  bitterly  to  criticise  the  works  which 
he  had  first  been  praising.  Not  only  did  he  harshly  pick  out 
the  real  carelessness,  the  mistakes  in  writing,  the  faults  of 
taste  or  of  expression  which  had  escaped  the  young  man,  but 
he  made  absurd  criticisms/  criticisms  which  might  have  been 
made  by  the  most  narrow  and  antiquated  of  musicians,  from 
which  he  himself,  Hassler,  had  had  to  suffer  all  his  life.  He 
asked  what  was  the  sense  of  it  all.  He  did  not  even  criticise: 
he  denied;  it  was  as  though  he  were  trying  desperately  to 
efface  the  impression  that  the  music  had  made  on  him  in  spite 
of  himself. 

Christophe  was  horrified  and  made  no  attempt  to  reply. 
How  could  he  reply  to  absurdities  which  he  blushed  to  hear 
on  the  lips  of  a man  whom  he  esteemed  and  loved?  Besides, 
Hassler  did  not  listen  to  him.  He  stopped  at  that,  stopped 
dead,  with  the  book  in  his  hands,  shut;  no  expression  in  his 
eyes  and  his  lips  drawn  down  in  bitterness.  At  last  he  said, 
as  though  he  had  once  more  forgotten  Christophers  presence: 

Ah ! the  worst  misery  of  all  is  that  there  is  not  a single 
man  who  can  understand  you ! 

Christophe  was  racked  with  emotion.  He  turned  suddenly, 
laid  his  hand  on  Hassler’s,  and  with  love  in  his  heart  he  re- 
peated : 


530 


JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 


“ There  is  myself ! ” z * 

But  Hassler  did  not  move  his  hand,  and  if  something  stirred 
in  his  heart  for  a moment  at  that  boyish  cry,  no  light  shone 
in  his  dull  eyes,  as  they  looked  at  Christophe.  Irony  and 
evasion  were  in  the  ascendant.  He  made  a ceremonious  and 
comic  little  bow  in  acknowledgment. 

“ Honored ! ” he  said. 

He  was  thinking : 

“Do  you,  though?  Do  you  think  I have  lost  my  life  for 
you  ? ” ■ 

He  got  up,  threw  the  book  on  the  piano,  and  went  with  his 
long  spindle  legs  and  sat  on  the  divan  again.  Christophe  had 
divined  his  thoughts  and  had  felt  the  savage  insult  in  them,  and 
he  tried  proudly  to  reply  that  a man  does  not  need  to  be  under- 
stood by  everybody;  certain  souls  are  worth  a whole  people; 
they  think  for  it,  and  what  they  have  thought  the  people  have  ‘ 
to  think. — But  Hassler  did  not  listen  to  him.  He  had  fallen 
back  into  his  apathy,  caused  by  the  weakening  of  the  life 
slumbering  in  him.  Christophe,  too  sane  to  understand  the  sud- 
den change,  felt  that  he  had  lost.  But  he  could  not  resign  him-  ^ 
self  to  losing  after  seeming  to  be  so  near  victory.  He  made  des-  i 
perate  efforts  to  excite  Hassler’s  attention  once  more.  He  took  i 
up  his  music  book  and  tried  to  explain  the  reason  for  the  irregu- 
larities which  Hassler  had  remarked.  Hassler  lay  back  on  the 
sofa  and  preserved  a gloomy  silence.  He  neither  agreed  nor  ^ 
contradicted ; he  was  only  waiting  for  him  to  finish.  ^ 

Christophe  saw  that  there  was  nothing  more  to  be  done.  He  i 
stopped  short  in  the  middle  of  a sentence.  He  rolled  up  his  ; 
music  and  got  up.  Hassler  got  up,  too.  Christophe  was  shy  ^ 
and  ashamed,  and  murmured  excuses.  Hassler  bowed  slightly,  ■ 
with  a certain  haughty  and  bored  distinction,  coldly  held  out 
his  hand  politely,  and  accompanied  him  to  the  door  without 
a word  of  suggestion  that  he  should  stay  or  come  again. 

Christophe  found  himself  in  the  street  once  more,  absolutely 
crushed.  He  walked  at  random ; he  did  not  know  where  he  was 
going.  He  walked  down  several  streets  mechanically,  and 
then  found  himself  at  a station  of  the  train  by  which  he  had 
come.  He  went  back  I)y  it  without  thinking  of  what  he  was 


KEVOLT 


521 


doing.  He  sank  down  on  the  seat  with  his  arms  and  legs  limp. 
It  was  impossible  to  think  or  to  collect  his  ideas;  he  thought 
of  nothing,  he  did  not  try  to  think.  He  was  afraid  to  envisage 
himself.  He  was  utterly  empty.  It  seemed  to  him  that  there 
was  emptiness  everywhere  about  him  in  that  town.  He  could 
not  breathe  in  it.  The  mists,  the  massive  houses  stifled  him. 
He  had  only  one  idea,  to  fly,  to  fly  as  quickly  as  possible, — as 
if  by  escaping  from  the  town  he  would  leave  in  it  the  bitter 
disillusion  which  he  had  found  in  it. 

He  returned  to  his  hotel.  It  was  half-past  twelve.  It  was 
two  hours  since  he  had  entered  it, — with  what  a light  shining 
in  his  heart!  Now  it  was  dead. 

He  took  no  lunch.  He  did  not  go  up  to  his  room.  To  the 
astonishment  of  the  people  of  the  hotel,  he  asked  for  his  bill, 
paid  as  though  he  had  spent  the  night  there,  and  said  that  he 
was  going.  In  vain  did  they  explain  to  him  that  there  was 
no  hurry,  that  the  train  he  wanted  to  go  by  did  not  leave 
for  hours,  and  that  he  had  much  better  wait  in  the  hotel.  He 
insisted  on  going  to  the  station  at  once.  He  was  like  a child. 
He  wanted  to  go  by  the  first  train,  no  matter  which,  and  not 
to  stay  another  hour  in  the  place.  After  the  long  journey  and 
all  the  expense  he  had  incurred, — although  he  had  taken  his 
holiday  not  only  to  see  Hassler,  but  the  museums,  and  to  hear 
concerts  and  to  make  certain  acquaintances — he  had  only  one 
idea  in  his  head : To  go  . . . 

He  went  back  to  the  station.  As  he  had  been  told,  his  train 
did  not  leave  for  three  hours.  And  also  the  train  was  not 
express — (for  Christophe  had  to  go  by  the  cheapest  class)  — 
stopped  on  the  way.  Christophe  would  have  done  better  to 
go  by  the  next  train,  which  went  two  hours  later  and  caught  up 
the  first.  But  that  meant  spending  two  more  hours  in  the 
place,  and  Christophe  could  not  bear  it.  He  would  not  even 
leave  the  station  while  he  was  waiting. — A gloomy  period  of 
waiting  in  those  vast  and  empty  halls,  dark  and  noisy,  where 
strange  shadows  were  going  in  and  out,  always  busy,  always 
hurrying;  strange  shadows  who  meant  nothing  to  him,  all  un- 
known to  him,  not  one  friendly  face.  The  misty  day  died 
down.  The  electric  lamps,  enveloped  in  fog,  flushed  the  night 
and  made  it  darker  than  ever.  Christophe  grew  more  and 


523 


JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 


more  depressed  as  time  went  on,  waiting  in  agony  for  the  time 
to  go.  Ten  times  an  hour  he  went  to  look  at  the  train  indi- 
cators to  make  sure  that  he  had  not  made  a mistake.  As  he 
was  reading  them  once  more  from  end  to  end  to  pass  the  time, 
the  name  of  a place  caught  his  eye.  He  thought  he  knew  it. 
It  was  only  after  a moment  that  he  remembered  that  it  was 
where  old  Schulz  lived,  who  had  written  him  such  kind  and 
enthusiastic  letters.  In  his  wretchedness  the  idea  came  to  him 
of  going  to  see  his  unknown  friend.  The  town  was  not  on  the 
direct  line  on  his  way  home,  but  a few  hours  away,  by  a little 
local  line.  It  meant  a whole  night’s  journey,  with  two  or  three 
changes  and  interminable  waits.  Christophe  never  thought 
about  it.  He  decided  suddenly  to  go.  He  had  an  instinctive 
need  of  clinging  to  sympathy  of  some  sort.  He  gave  himself  no 
time  to  think,  and  telegraphed  to  Schulz  to  say  that  he  would 
arrive  next  morning.  Hardly  had  he  sent  the  telegram  than  he 
regretted  it.  He  laughed  bitterly  at  his  eternal  illusions.  Why 
go  to  meet  a new  sorrow  ? — But  it  was  done  now.  It  was  too  ^ 
late  to  change  his  mind. 

These  thoughts  filled  his  last  hour  of  waiting— his  train  at  < 
last  was  ready.  He  was  the  first  to  get  into  it,  and  he  was  so 
childish  that  he  only  began  to  breathe  again  when  the  train 
shook,  and  through  the  carriage  window  he  could  see  the 
outlines  of  the  town  fading  into  the  gray  sky  under  the  heavy 
downpour  of  the  night.  He  thought  he  must  have  died  if  he 
had  spent  the  night  in  it.  ; 

At  the  very  hour — about  six  in  the  evening — a letter  from  i 
Hassler  came  for  Christophe  at  his  hotel.  Christophe’s  visit; 
stirred  many  things  in  him.  The  whole  afternoon  he  had  been 
thinking  of  it  bitterly,  and  not  without  sympathy  for  the  poor ' 
boy  who  had  come  to  him  with  such  eager  affection  to  be  re- 
ceived so  coldly.  He  was  sorry  for  that  reception  and  a little 
angry  with  himself.  In  truth,  it  had  been  only  one  of  those 
fits  of  sulky  whimsies  to  which  he  was  subject.  He  thought 
to  make  it  good  by  sending  Christophe  a ticket  for  the  opera 
and  a few  words  appointing  a meeting  after  the  performance. — 
Christophe  never  knew  anything  about  it.  When  he  did  not 
see  him,  Hassler  thought: 

“ He  is  angry.  So  much  the  worse  for  him ! ” 


EEVOLT 


523 


He  shrugged  his  shoulders  and  did  not  wait  long  for  him. 
Next  day  Christophe  was  far  away — so  far  that  all  eternity 
would  not  have  been  enough  to  bring  them  together.  And 
they  were  both  separated  forever. 


Peter  Schulz  was  seventy-five.  He  had  always  had  delicate 
health  and  age  had  not  spared  him.  He  was  fairly  tall,  but 
stooping,  and  his  head  hung  down  to  his  chest.  He  had  a 
weak  throat  and  difficulty  in  breathing.  Asthma,  catarrh,  bron- 
chitis were  always  upon  him,  and  the  marks  of  the  struggles 
he  had  to  make — many  a night  sitting  up  in  his  bed,  bending 
forward,  dripping  with  sweat  in  the  effort  to  force  a breath  of 
air  into  his  stifling  lungs — were  in  the  sorrowful  lines  on  his 
long,  thin,  clean-shaven  face.  His  nose  was  long  and  a little 
swollen  at  the  top.  Deep  lines  came  from  under  his  eyes  and 
crossed  his  cheeks,  that  were  hollow  from  his  toothlessness. 
Age  and  infirmity  had  not  been  the  only  sculptors  of  that 
poor  wreck  of  a man:  the  sorrows  of  life  also  had  had  their 
share  in  its  making. — And  in  spite  of  all  he  was  not  sad.  There 
was  kindness  and  serenity  in  his  large  mouth.  But  in  his  eyes 
especially  there  was  that  which  gave  a touching  softness  to  the 
old  face.  They  were  light  gray,  limpid,  and  transparent.  They 
looked  straight,  calmly  and  frankly.  They  hid  nothing  of  the 
soul.  Its  depths  could  be  read  in  them. 

His  life  had  been  uneventful.  He  had  been  alone  for  years. 
His  wife  was  dead.  She  was  not  very  good,  or  very  intelli- 
gent, and  she  was  not  at  all  beautiful.  But  he  preserved  a 
tender  memory  of  her.  It  was  twenty-five  years  since  he  had 
lost  her,  and  he  had  never  once  failed  a night  to  have  a 
little  imaginary  conversation,  sad  and  tender,  with  her  before 
he  went  to  sleep.  He  shared  all  his  doings  with  her. — He  had 
had  no  children.  That  was  the  great  sorrow  of  his  life.  He 
had  transferred  his  need  of  affection  to  his  pupils,  to  whom  he 
was  attached  as  a father  to  his  sons.  He  had  found  very  little 
return.  An  old  heart  can  feel  very  near  to  a young  heart  and\ 
almost  of  the  same  age;  knowing  how  brief  are  the  years  that  ^ 
lie  between  them.  But  the  young  man  never  has  any  idea  of 
that.  To  him  an  old  man  is  a man  of  another  age,  and  be- 
sides, he  is  absorbed  by  his  immediate  anxieties  and  instinctively 


524 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


turns  away  from  the  melancholy  end  of  all  his  efforts.  Old 
Schulz  had  sometimes  found  gratitude  in-  his  pupils  who  were 
touched  by  the  keen  and  lively  interest  he  took  in  everything 
good  or  ill  that  happened  to  them.  They  used  to  come  and  see 
him  from  time  to  time.  They  used  to  write  and.  thank  him 
when  they  left  the  university.  Some  of  them  used  to  go  on 
writing  occasionally  during  the  years  following.  And  then 
old  Schulz  would  hear  nothing  more  of  them  except  in  the 
papers  which  kept  him  informed  of  their  advancement,  and  he 
would  be  as  glad  of  their  success  as  though  it  was  his  own.  He 
was  never  hurt  by  their  silence.  He  found  a thousand  excuses 
for  it.  He  never  doubted  their  affection  and  used  to  ascribe 
even  to  the  most  selfish  the  feelings  that  he  had  for  them. 

But  his  books  were  his  greatest  refuge.  They  neither  forgot 
nor  deceived  him.  The  souls  which  he  cherished  in  them  had 
risen  above  the  flood  of  time.  They  were  inscrutable,  fixed  for 
eternity  in  the  love  they  inspired  and  seemed  to  feel,  and  gave 
forth  once  more  to  those  who  loved  them.  He  was  Professor  of 
.^Esthetics  and  the  History  of  Music,  and  he  was  like  an  old 
wood  quivering  with  the  songs  of  birds.  Some  of  these  songs 
sounded  very  far  away.  They  came  from  the  depths  of  the 
ages.  But  they  were  not  the  least  sweet  and  mysterious  of 
all. — Others  were  familiar  and  intimate  to  him,  dear  compan- 
ions; their  every  phrase  reminded  him  of  the  joys  and  sor- 
rows of  his  past  life,  conscious  or  unconscious :—( for  under 
every  day  lit  by  the  light  of  the  sun  there  are  unfolded  other 
days  lit  by  a light  unknown)— And  there  were  some  songs  that 
he  had  never  yet  heard,  songs  which  said  the  things  that  he 
had  been  long  awaiting  and  needing;  and  his  heart  opened  to 
receive  them  like  the  earth  to  receive  rain.  And  so  old  Schulz 
listened,  in  the  silence  .of  his  solitary  life,  to  the  forest  filled 
with  birds,  and,  like  the  monk  of  the  legend,  who  slept  in  the 
ecstasy  of  the  song  of  the  magic  bird,  the  years  passed  over 
him  and  the  evening  of  life  was  come,  but  still  he  had  the  heart 
of  a boy  of  twenty. 

He  was  not  only  rich  in  music.  He  loved  the  poets— old  and 
new.  He  had  a predilection  for  those  of  his  own  country, 
especially  for  Goethe;  but  he  also  loved  those  of  other  coun- 
tries. He  was  a learned  man  and  could  read  several  languages. 


EEVOLT 


525 


In  mind  he  was  a contemporary  of  Herder  and  the  great 
Weltburger — ^the  citizens  of  the  world/^  of  the  end  of  the 

eighteenth  century.  He  had  lived  through  the  years  of  bitter 
struggle  which  preceded  and  followed  seventy,  and  was  im- 
mersed in  their  vast  idea.  And  although  he  adored  Germany, 
he  was  not  vainglorious  about  it.  He  thought,  with  Herder, 
that  among  all  vainglorious  men,  he  who  is  vainglorious  of 
his  nationality  is  the  completest  fool/'  and,  with  Schiller,  that 
it  is  a poor  ideal  only  to  write  for  one  nation/'  And  he  was 
timid  of  mind,  but  his  heart  was  large,  and  ready  to  welcome 
lovingly  everything  beautiful  in  the  world.  Perhaps  he  was 
too  indulgent  with  mediocrity;  but  his  instinct  never  doubted 
as  to  what  was  the  best;  and  if  he  was  not  strong  enough  to 
condemn  the  sham  artists  admired  by  public  opinion,  he  was 
always  strong  enough  to  defend  the  artists  of  originality  and 
power  whom  public  opinion  disregarded.  His  kindness  often 
led  him  astray.  He  was  fearful  of  committing  any  injustice, 
and  when  he  did  not  like  what  others  liked,  he  never  doubted 
but  that  it  must  be  he  who  was  mistaken,  and  he  would  man- 
age to  love  it.  It  was  so  sweet  to  him  to  love!  Love  and 
admiration  were  even  more  necessary  to  his  moral  being  than 
air  to  his  miserable  lungs.  And  so  how  grateful  he  was  to 
those  who  gave  him  a new  opportunity  of  showing  them ! — 
Christophe  could  have  no  idea  of  what  his  Lieder  had  been  to 
him.  He  himself  had  not  felt  them  nearly  so  keenly  when  he 
had  written  them.  His  songs  were  to  him  only  a few  sparks 
thrown  out  from  his  inner  fire.  He  had  cast  them  forth 
and  would  cast  forth  others.  But  to  old  Schulz  they  were  a 
whole  world  suddenly  revealed  to  him — a whole  world  to  be 
loved.  His  life  had  been  lit  up  by  them. 

A year  before  he  had  had  to  resign  his  position  at  the  uni- 
versity. His  health,  growing  more  and  more  precarious, 
prevented  his  lecturing.  He  was  ill  and  in  bed  when  Wolfs 
Library  had  sent  him  as  usual  a parcel  of  the  latest  music  they 
had  received,  and  in  it  were  Christophers  Lieder,  He  was  alone. 
He  was  without  relatives.  The  few  that  he  had  had  were  long 
since  dead.  He  was  delivered  into  the  hands  of  an  old  servant, 
who  profited  by  his  weakness  to  make  him  do  whatever  she  liked. 


526 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


A few  friends  hardly  younger  than  himself  used  to  come  and 
see  him  from  time  to  time,  but  they  were  not  in  very  good 
health  either,  and  when  the  weather  was  bad  they  too  stayed  in- 
doors and  missed  their  visits.  It  was  winter  then  and  the  streets 
were  covered  with  melting  snow.  Schulz  had  not  seen  anybody 
all  day.  It  was  dark  in  the  room.  A yellow  fog  was  drawn 
over  the  windows  like  a screen,  making  it  impossible  to  see 
out.  The  heat  of  the  stove  was  thick  and  oppressive.  From  the 
church  hard  by  an  old  peal  of  bells  of  the  seventeenth  century 
chimed  every  quarter  of  an  hour,  haltingly  and  horribly  out 
of  tune,  scraps  of  monotonous  chants,  which  seemed  grim  in 
their  heartiness  to  Schulz  when  he  was  far  from  gay  him- 
self. He  was  coughing,  propped  up  by  a heap  of  pillows.  He 
was  trying  to  read  Montaigne,  whom  he  loved ; but  now  he 
did  not  find  as  much  pleasure  in  reading  him  as  usual.  He 
let  the  book  fall,  and  was  breathing  with  difficulty  and  dream- 
ing. The  parcel  of  music  was  on  the  bed.  He  had  not  the 
courage  to  open  it.  He  was  sad  at  heart.  At  last  he  sighed, 
and  when  he  had  very  carefully  untied  the  string,  he  put  on 
his  spectacles  and  began  to  read  the  pieces  of  music.  His 
thoughts  were  elsewhere,  always  returning  to  memories  which  • 
he  was  trying  to  thrust  aside.  ' 

The  book  he  was  holding  was  Christophers.  His  eyes  fell 
on  an  old  canticle  the  words  of  which  Christophe  had  taken 
from  a simple,  pious  poet  of  the  seventeenth  century,  and 
had  modernized  them.  The  ChristUches  Wa/nderlied  (The  i 

Christian  Wanderer^s  Song)  of  Paul  Gerhardt. 

Hoff!  O du  arme  Seel^ 

Hoff!  und  sei  unverzagt,  ‘ 

Erwarte  nur  der  Zeit, 

So  wirst  du  schon  erhlicTcen 

Die  Sonne  der  schonsten  Freud. 

Hope,  oh!  thou  wretched  soul, 

Hope,  hope  and  be  valiant! 

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ 

Only  wait  then,  wait. 

And  surely  thou  shalt  see 

The  sun  of  lovely  Joy. 


EEVOLT 


527 


Old  Schulz  knew  the  ingenuous  words,  but  never  had  they 
so  spoken  to  him,  never  so  nearly.  ...  It  was  not  the  tranquil 
piety,  soothing  and  lulling  the  soul  by  its  monotony.  It  was 
a soul  like  his  own.  It  was  his  own  soul,  but  younger  and 
stronger,  suffering,  striving  to  hope,  striving  to  see,  and  seeing, 
Joy.  His  hands  trembled,  great  tears  trickled  down  his  cheeks. 
He  read  on: 

Auf!  Auf!  gieh  deinem  Schmerze 
Vnd  Morgen  gute  Nacht! 

Ldss  fahren  was  das  Herze 
Betruht  und  traurig  macht! 

Up!  Up!  and  give  thy  sorrow 
And  all  thy  cares  good-night; 

And  all  that  grieves  and  saddens 
Thy  heart  be  put  to  flight 

Christophe  brought  to  these  thoughts  a boyish  and  valiant 
ardor,  and  the  heroic  laughter  in  it  showed  forth  in  the  last 
naive  and  confident  verses: 

Bist  du  doch  nicht  Regente, 

Der  alles  fuhren  soli, 

Gott  sitzt  im>  Regimente, 

Vnd  fiihret  alles  woUl, 

Not  thou  thyself  art  ruler 
Whom  all  things  must  obey, 

But  God  is  Lord  decreeing— 

All  follows  in  His  way. 

And  when  there  came  the  superbly  defiant  stanzas  which  in 
his  youthful  barbarian  insolence  he  had  calmly  plucked  from 
their  original  position  in  the  poem  to  form  the  conclusion  of 
his  Lied: 

Vnd  ohgleich  alle  Teufel 
Hier  wollten  iviederstefin, 

Bo  unrd  doch  ohne  Zweifel, 

Gott  nicht  zuriicJce  gehn. 

Was  er  ihm  vorgenommen, 

Vnd  was  ct  hahen  willt 

Das  muss  doch  endlich  hommen 

Zu  seinem  ZicecTc  und  Ziel. 


628 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


And  even  though  all  Devils 
Came  and  opposed  his  will. 

There  were  no  cause  for  doubting, 

God  will  be  steadfast  still: 

What  He  has  undertaken, 

All  His  divine  decree — 

Exactly  as  He  ordered 
At  last  shall  all  things  be. 

. . . then  there  were  transports  of  delight,  the  intoxication 
of  war,  the  triumph  of  a Eoman  Imperator. 

The  old  man  trembled  all  over.  Breathlessly  he  followed  the 
impetuous  music  like  a child  dragged  along  by  a companion. 
His  heart  beat.  Tears  trickled  down.  He  stammered: 

^^Oh!  My  God!  ...  Oh!  My  God!  . . 

He  began  to  sob  and  he  laughed;  he  was  happy.  He  choked. 
He  was  attacked  by  a terrible  fit  of  coughing.  Salome,  the  old 
servant,  ran  to  him,  and  she  thought  the  old  man  was  going  . 
to  die.  He  went  on  crying,  and  coughing,  and  saying  over  . 
and  over  again: 

^^Oh!  My  God!  ...  My  God!  . . ! 

And  in  the  short  moments  of  respite  between  the  fits  of 
coughing  he  laughed  a little  hysterically.  j 

Salome  thought  he  was  going  mad.  When  at  last  she  under- 
stood the  cause  of  his  agitation,  she  scolded  him  sharply: 

How  can  anybody  get  into  such  a state  over  a piece  of 
foolery!  . . . Give  it  me!  I shall  take  it  away.  You  shan’t 
see  it  again.”  • 

But  the  old  man  held  firm,  in  the  midst  of  his  coughing,  and  ] 
he  cried  to  Salome  to  leave  him  alone.  As  she  insisted,  he  i 
grew  angry,  swore,  and  choked  himself  with  his  oaths.  Never  . 
had  she  known  him  to  be  angry  and  to  stand  out  against  her.  ] 
She  was  aghast  and  surrendered  her  prize.  But  she  did  not 
mince  her  words  with  him.  She  told  him  he  was  an  old  fool 
and  said  that  hitherto  she  had  thought  she  had  to  do  with  a 
gentleman,  but  that  now  she  saw  her  mistake;  that  he  said 
things  which  would  make  a plowman  blush,  that  his  eyes  were 
starting  from  his  head,  and  if  they  had  been  pistols  would 
have  killed  her  . . . She  would  have  gone  on  for  a long  time 
in  that  strain  if  he  had  not  got  up  furiously  on  his  pillow  and 
shouted  at  her: 


EEVOLT 


529 


“ Go ! ” in  so  peremptory  a voice  that  she  went,  slamming 
the  door  and  declaring  that  he  might  call  her  as  much  as  he 
liked,  only  she  would  not  put  herself  out  and  would  leave  him 
alone  to  kick  the  bucket. 

Then  silence  descended  upon  the  darkening  room.  Once 
more  the  bells  pealed  placidly  and  grotesquely  through  the 
calm  evening.  A little  ashamed  of  his  anger,  old  Schulz  was 
lying  on  his  back,  motionless,  waiting,  breathless,  for  the 
tumult  in  his  heart  to  die  down.  He  was  clasping  the  precious 
Lieder  to  his  breast  and  laughing  like  a child. 

He  spent  the  following  days  of  solitude  in  a sort  of  ecstasy. 
He  thought  no  more  of  his  illness,  of  the  winter,  of  the  gray 
light,  or  of  his  loneliness.  Everything  was  bright  and  filled 
with  love  about  him.  So  near  to  death,  he  felt  himself  living 
again  in  the  young  soul  of  an  unknown  friend. 

He  tried  to  imagine  Christophe.  He  did  not  see  him  as 
anything  like  what  he  was.  He  saw  him  rather  as  an  idealized 
version  of  himself,  as  he  would  have  liked  to  be : fair,  slim, 
with  blue  eyes,  and  a gentle,  quiet  voice,  soft,  timid  and  tender. 
He  idealized  everything  about  him : his  pupils,  his  neighbors, 
his  friends,  his  old  servant.  His  gentle,  affectionate  dispo- 
sition and  his  want  of  the  critical  faculty— in  part  voluntary, 
so  as  to  avoid  any  disturbing  thought — surrounded  him  with 
serene,  pure  images  like  himself.  It  was  the  kindly  lying 
which  he  needed  if  he  were  to  live.  He  was  not  altogether 
deceived  by  it,  and  often  in  his  bed  at  night  he  would  sigh  as 
he  thought  of  a thousand  little  things  which  had  happened 
during  the  day  to  contradict  his  idealism.  He  knew  quite  well 
that  old  Salome  used  to  laugh  at  him  behind  his  back  with 
her  gossips,  and  that  she  used  to  rob  him  regularly  every 
week.  He  knew  that  his  pupils  were  obsequious  with  him 
while  they  had  need  of  him,  and  that  after  they  had  received 
all  the  services  they  could  expect  from  him  they  deserted  him. 
He  knew  that  his  former  colleagues  at  the  university  had 
forgotten  him  altogether  since  he  had  retired,  and  that  his 
successor  attacked  him  in  his  articles,  not  by  name,  but  by  some 
treacherous  allusion,  and  by  quoting  some  worthless  thing  that 
he  had  said  or  by  pointing  out  his  mistakes— (a  procedure 


530 


JEAN-CHKISTOPHE 


very  common  in  the  world  of  criticism).  He  knew  that  his 
old  friend  Kunz  had  lied  to  him  that  very  afternoon,  and  that 
he  would  never  see  again  the  books  which  his  other  friend, 
Pottpetschmidt,  had  borrowed  for  a few  days, — which  was  hard 
for  a man  who,  like  himself,  was  as  attached  to  his  books  as 
to  living  people.  Many  other  sad  things,  old  or  new,  would 
come  to  him.  He  tried  not  to  think  of  them,  but  they  were 
there  all  the  same.  He  was  conscious  of  them.  Sometimes 
the  memory  of  them  would  pierce  him  like  some  rending  sorrow. 

"Oh!  My  God!  My  God!  . . .” 

He  would  groan  in  the  silence  of  the  night. — And  then 
he  would  discard  such  hurtful  thoughts;  he  would  deny  them; 
he  would  try  to  be  confident,  and  optimistic,  and  to  believe  in 
human  truth;  and  he  would  believe.  How  often  had  his 
illusions  been  brutally  destroyed! — But  always  others  spring- 
ing into  life,  always,  always.  . . . He  could  not  do  without  . 
them. 

The  unknown  Christophe  became  a fire  of  warmth  to  his 
life.  The  first  cold,  ungracious  letter  which  he  received  from 
him  would  have  hurt  him — (perhaps  it  did  so) — but  he  would 
not  admit  it,  and  it  gave  him  a childish  joy.  He  was  so 
modest  and  asked  so  little  of  men  that  the  little  he  received  , 
from  them  was  enough  to  feed  his  need  of  loving  and  being  ■ 
grateful  to  them.  To  see  Christophe  was  a happiness  which  ■ 
he  had  never  dared  to  hope  for,  for  he  was  too  old  now  to  ; 
journey  to  the  banks  of  the  Ehine,  and  as  for  asking  Christophe  : 
to  come  to  him,  the  idea  had  never  even  occurred  to  him.  ] 

Christophe’s  telegram  reached  him  in  the  evening,  just  as  i 
he  was  sitting  down  to  dinner.  He  did  not  understand  at  first.  I 
He  thought  he  did  not  know  the  signature.  He  thought  there  | 
was  some  mistake,  that  the  telegram  was  not  for  him.  He 
read  it  three  times.  In  his  excitement  his  spectacles  would 
not  stay  on  his  nose.  The  lamp  gave  a very  bad  light,  and 
the  letters  danced  before  his  eyes.  When  he  did  understand 
he  was  so  overwhelmed  that  he  forgot  to  eat.  In  vain  did 
Salome  shout  at  him.  He  could  not  swallow  a morsel.  He 
threw  his  napkin  on  the  table,  unfolded, — a thing  he  never  did. 
He  got  up,  hobbled  to  get  his  hat  and  stick,  and  went  out.  Old 


EEVOLT 


531 


Schulz’s  first  thought  on  receiving  such  good  news  was  to  go 
and  share  it  with  others^  and  to  tell  his  friends  of  Christophe’s 
coming. 

He  had  two  friends  who  were  music  mad  like  himself,  and 
he  had  succeeded  in  making  them  share  his  enthusiasm  for 
Christ ophe.  Judge  Samuel  Hunz  and  the  dentist,  Oscar 
Pottpetschmidt,  who  was  an  excellent  singer.  The  three  old 
friends  had  often  talked  about  Christophe,  and  they  had  played 
all  his  music  that  they  could  find.  Pottpetschmidt  sang,  Schulz 
accompanied,  and  Kunz  listened.  They  would  go  into  ecstasies 
for  hours  together.  How  often  had  they  said  while  they 
were  playing: 

Ah ! If  only  Krafft  were  here ! ” 

Schulz  laughed  to  himself  in  the  street  for  the  joy  he  had 
and  was  going  to  give.  Night  was  falling,  and  Kunz  lived  in 
a little  village  half  an  hour  away  from  the  town.  But  the 
sky  was  clear;  it  was  a soft  April  evening.  The  nightingales 
were  singing.  Old  Schulz’s  heart  was  overflowing  with  happi- 
ness. He  breathed  without  difficulty,  he  walked  like  a boy. 
He  strode  along  gleefully,  without  heeding  the  stones  against 
which  he  kicked  in  the  darkness.  He  turned  blithely  into  the 
side  of  the  road  when  carts  came  along,  and  exchanged  a merry 
greeting  with  the  drivers,  who  looked  at  him  in  astonishment 
when  the  lamps  showed  the  old  man  climbing  up  the  bank  of 
the  road. 

Night  was  fully  come  when  he  reached  Kunz’s  house,  a little 
way  out  of  the  village  in  a little  garden.  He  drummed  on  the 
door  and  shouted  at  the  top  of  his  voice.  A window  was 
opened  and  Kunz  appeared  in  alarm.  He  peered  through  the 
door  and  asked: 

Who  is  there  ? What  is  it  ? ” 

Schulz  was  out  of  breath,  but  he  called  gladly: 

Krafft — Krafft  is  coming  to-morrow  . . .”  Kunz  did 

not  understand;  but  he  recognized  the  voice: 

"'Schulz!  . . . What!  At  this  hour?  What  is  it?’' 

Schulz  repeated: 

" To-morrow,  he  is  coming  to-morrow  morning ! . . .” 

" What  ? ” asked  Kunz,  still  mystified. 


532 


JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 


^^Krafft!’^  cried  Schulz. 

Kunz  pondered  the  word  for  a moment;  then  a loud  ex- 
clamation showed  that  he  had  understood. 

I am  coming  down ! he  shouted. 

The  window  was  closed.  He  appeared  on  the  steps  with  a 
lamp  in  his  hand  and  came  down  into  the  garden.  He  was  a 
little  stout  old  man,  with  a large  gray  head,  a red  beard,  red 
hair  on  his  face  and  hands.  He  took  little  steps  and  he  was 
smoking  a porcelain  pipe.  This  good  natured,  rather  sleepy 
little  man  had  never  worried  much  about  anything.  For  all 
that,  the  news  brought  by  Schulz  excited  him;  he  waved  his 
short  arms  and  his  lamp  and  asked: 

^^What?  Is  it  him?  Is  he  really  coming 

To-morrow  morning ! said  Schulz,  triumphantly  waving 
the  telegram. 

The  two  old  friends  went  and  sat  on  a seat  in  the  arbor.  • 
Schulz  took  the  lamp.  Kunz  carefully  unfolded  the  telegram  ■ 
and  read  it  slowly  in  a whisper.  Schulz  read  it  again  aloud 
over  his  shoulder.  Kunz  went  on  looking  at  the  paper,  the ' 
marks  on  the  telegram,  the  time  when  it  had  been  sent,  the 
time  when  it  had  arrived,  the  number  of  words.  Then  he  gave ' 
the  precious  paper  back  to  Schulz,  who  was  laughing  happily, 
looked  at  him  and  wagged  his  head  and  said: 

^^Ah!  well  ...  Ah!  well!  . . 

After  a moments  thought  and  after  drawing  in  and  ex- 
pelling a cloud  of  tobacco  smoke  he  put  his  hand  on  Schulz’s: 
knee  and  said: 

We  must  tell  Pottpetschmidt.” 

^^I  was  going  to  him,”  said  Schulz. 

^^I  will  go  with  you,”  said  Kunz.  i 

He  went  in  and  put  down  his  lamp  and  came  back  imme- 
diately. The  two  old  men  went  on  arm  in  arm.  Pottpet- 
schmidt  lived  at  the  other  end  of  the  village.  Schulz  and  Kunz 
exchanged  a few  absent  words,  but  they  were  both  pondering 
the  news.  Suddenly  Kunz  stopped  and  whacked  on  the  ground 
with  his  stick: 

Oh ! Lord ! ” he  said.  . . . ^^  He  is  away ! ” 

He  had  remembered  that  Pottpetschmidt  had  had  to  go  away 
that  afternoon  for  an  operation  at  a neighboring  town  where 


EEVOLT 


533 


he  had  to  spend  the  night  and  stay  a day  or  two.  Schulz  was 
distressed.  Kunz  was  equally  put  out.  They  were  proud  of 
Pottpetschmidt ; they  would  have  liked  to  show  him  off.  They 
stood  in  the  middle  of  the  road  and  could  not  make  up  their 
minds  what  to  do. 

“What  shall  we  do?  What  shall  we  do?”  asked  Kunz. 

“ Krafft  absolutely  must  hear  Pottpetschmidt,”  said  Schulz. 

He  thought  for  a moment  and  said: 

“ We  must  sent  him  a telegram.” 

They  went  to  the  post  office  and  together  they  composed  a 
long  and  excited  telegram  of  which  it  was  very  difficult  to 
understand  a word.  Then  they  went  back.  Schulz  reckoned: 

“ He  could  be  here  to-morrow  morning  if  he  took  the  first 
train.” 

But  Kunz  pointed  out  that  it  was  too  late  and  that  the 
telegram  would  not  be  sent  until  the  morning.  Schulz  nodded, 
and  they  said : 

“ How  unfortunate  I ” 

They  parted  at  Kunz’s  door ; for  in  spite  of  his  friendship 
for  Schulz  it  did  not  go  so  far  as  to  make  him  commit  the 
imprudence  of  accompanying  Schulz  outside  the  village,  and 
even  to  the  end  of  the  road  by  which  he  would  have  had  to 
come  back  alone  in  the  dark.  It  was  arranged  that  Kunz 
should  dine  on  the  morrow  with  Schulz.  Schulz  looked  anx- 
iously at  the  sky : 

“ If  only  it  is  fine  to-morrow ! ” 

And  his  heart  was  a little  lighter  when  Kunz,  who  was  sup- 
posed to  have  a wonderful  knowledge  of  meteorology,  looked 
gravely  at  the  sky — (for  he  was  no  less  anxious  than  Schulz 
that  Christophe  should  see'  their  little  countryside  in  all  its 
beauty) — and  said: 

“ It  will  be  fine  to-morrow.” 

Schulz  went  along  the  road  to  the  town  and  came  to  it  not 
without  having  stumbled  more  than  once  in  the  ruts  and  the 
heaps  of  stones  by  the  wayside.  Before  he  went  home  he  called 
in  at  the  confectioner’s  to  order  a certain  tart  which  was  the 
envy  of  the  town.  Then  he  went  home,  but  just  as  he  was 
going  in  he  turned  back  to  go  to  the  station  to  find  out  the 


1 


534  JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 

exact  time  at  whieli  the  train  arrived.  At  last  he  did^  go 
home  and  called  Salome  and  discussed  at  length  the  dinner  i 
for  the  morrow.  Then  only  he  went  to  bed  worn  out;  but  he  ' 
was  as  excited  as  a child  on  Christmas  Eve,  and  all  night  he  | 
turned  about  and  about  and  never  slept  a wink.  About  one 
o’clock  in  the  morning  he  thought  of  getting  up  to  go  and  tell 
Salome  to  cook  a stewed  carp  for  dinner;  for  she  was  marvel- 
ously successful  with  that  dish.  He  did  not  tell  her ; and  it  was 
as  well,  no  doubt.  But  he  did  get  up  to -arrange  all  sorts  of 
things  in  the  room  he  meant  to  give  Christophe ; he  took  a thou- 
sand precautions  so  that  Salome  should  not  hear  him,  for  he  was 
afraid  of  being  scolded.  All  night  long  he  was  afraid  of  miss- 
ing the  train  although  Christophe  could  not  arrive  before  eight 
o’clock.  He  was  up  very  early.  He  first  looked  at  the  sky; 
Kunz  had  not  made  a mistake;  it  was  glorious  weather.  On 
tiptoe  Schulz  went  down  to  the  cellar;  he  had  not  been  there 
for  a long  time,  fearing  the  cold  and  the  steep  stairs ; he  se- 
lected his  best  wines,  knocked  his  head  hard  against  the  ceil- 
ing as  he  came  up  again,  and  thought  he  was  going  to  choke 
when  he  reached  the  top  of  the  stairs  with  his  full  basket.  , 
Then  he  went  to  the  garden  with  his  shears ; ruthlessly  he  t 
cut  his  finest  roses  and  the  first  branches  of  lilac  in  fiower.  ^ 
Then  he  went  up  to  his  room  again,  shaved  feverishly,  and  cut ; 
himself  more  than  once.  He  dressed  carefully  and  set  out  for ; 
the  station.  It  was  seven  o’clock.  Salome  had  not  succeeded  ; 
in  making  him  take  so  much  as  a drop  of  milk,  for  he  declared  » 
that  Christophe  would  not  have  had  breakfast  when  he  ar- j 
rived  and  that  they  would  have  breakfast  together  when  they^ 
came  from  the  station.  i 

He  was  at  the  station  three-quarters  of  an  hour  too  soon,  i 
He  waited  and  waited  for  Christophe  and  finally  missed  him. 
Instead  of  waiting  patiently  at  the  gate  he  went  on  to  the 
platform  and  lost  his  head  in  the  crowd  of  people  coming  and 
going.  In  spite  of  the  exact  information  of  the  telegram  he 
had  imagined,  God  knows  why,  that  Christophe  would  arrive  by 
a different  train  from  that  which  brought  him ; and  besides  it 
had  never  occurred  to  him  that  Christophe  would  get  out  of 
a fourth-class  carriage.  He  stayed  on  for  more  than  half  an 
hour  waiting  at  the  station,  when  Christophe,  who  had  long 


I 


EEVOLT 


535 


since  arrived,  had  gone  straight  to  his  house.  As  a erowmng 
misfortune  Salome  had  just  gone  out  to  do  her  shopping; 
Christophe  found  the  door  shut.  The  woman  next  door  whom 
Salome  had  told  to  say,  in  case  any  one  should  ring,  that  she 
would  soon  be  back,  gave  the  message  without  any  addition  to 
it  Christophe,  who  had  not  come  to  see  Salome  and  did  not 
even  know  who  she  was,  thought  it  a very  bad  joke;  he  asked  it 
Herr  Universitdts  MusikdireMor  Schulz  was  not  at  h(^e. 
He  was  told  " Yes,”  but  the  woman  could  not  tell  him  where 
he  was.  Christophe  was  furious  and  went  away. 

When  old  Schulz  came  back  with  a face  an  ell  long  and  learned 
from  Salome,  who  had  just  come  in  too,  what  had  happened 
he  was  in  despair;  he  almost  wept.  He  stormed  at  his  servant 
for  her  stupidity  in  going  out  while  he  was  away  and  not 
having  even  given  instructions  that  Christophe  was  to  be  kept 
waiting.  Salome  replied  in  the  same  way  that  she  could  not 
imagine  that  he  would  be  so  foolish  as  to  miss  a man  whom  he 
had  gone  to  meet.  But  the  old  man  did  not  stay  to  argue  with 
her’  without  losing  a moment  he  hobbled  out  of  doors  again 
and’ went  off  to  look  for  Christophe  armed  with  the  very  vague 
clues  given  him  by  his  neighbors.  _ j . 

Christophe  had  been  offended  at  finding  nobody  and  not 
even  a word  of  excuse.  Not  knowing  what  to  do  until  the  ne^ 
train  he  went  and  walked  about  the  town  and  the  fields,  which 
he  thought  very  pretty.  It  was  a quiet  reposeful  little  town 
sheltered  between  gently  sloping  hills;  there  were  gardens  round 
the  houses,  cherry-trees  and  fiowers,  green  lawns,  beautitul 
shady  trees,  pseudo-antique  ruins,  white  busts  of  bygone 
princesses  on  marble  columns  in  the  midst  of  the  trees,  with 
gentle  and  pleasing  faces.  All  about  the  town  were  meadows 
Ind  hills.  In  the  fiowering  trees  blackbirds  whistled  joyously, 
for  many  little  orchestras  of  flutes  gay  and  solemn.  It  was  not 
long  before  Christophe’s  ill-humor  vanished;  he  forgot  Peter 

^^^Th^old  man  rushed  vainly  through  the  streets  questioning 
people;  he  went  up  to  the  old  castle  on  the  hill  above  the  town 
and  was  coming  back  in  despair  when,  with  hp  keen,  far-sighte 
eves  he  saw  some  distance  away  a man  lying  in  a meadow  in  t e 
shade  of  a thorn.  He  did  not  know  Christophe;  he  had  no 


636 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


means  of  being  sure  that  it  was  he.  Besides,  the  man’s  hack  j 
was  turned  towards  him  and  his  face  was  half  hidden  in  the 
grass.  Schulz  prowled  along  the  road  and  about  the  meadow 
with  his  heart  beating : i 

“ It  is,  he  . . . No,  it  is  not  he  , . .” 

He  dared  not  call  to  him.  An  idea  struck  him;  he  began 
to  sing  the  last  bars  of  Christophe’s  Lied: 

"'Auf!  Auf!  . . (Up!  Up!  . . .) 

Christophe  rose  to  it  like  a fish  out  of  the  water  and  shouted 
the  following  bars  at  the  top  of  his  voice.  He  turned  gladly. 
His  face  was  red  and  there  was  grass  in  his  hair.  They  called 
to  each  other  hy  name  and  ran  together.  Schulz  strode  across 
the  ditch  by  the  road;  Christophe  leaped  the  fence.  They 
shook  hands  warmly  and  went  back  to  the  house  laughing  and 
talking  loudly.  The  old  man  told  how  he  had  missed  him. 
Christophe,  who  a moment  before  had  decided  to  go  away  with-  ■ 
out  making  any  further  attempt  to  see  Schulz,  was  at  once 
conscious  of  his  kindness  and  simplicity  and  began  to  love  him. 
Before  they  arrived  they  had  already  confided  many  things  to 
each  other. 

When  they  reached  the  house  they  found  Kunz,  who,  having 
learned  that  Schulz  had  gone  to  look  for  Christophe,  was  , 
waiting  quietly.  They  were  given  cafe  au  lait.  But  Christophe 
said  that  he  had  breakfasted  at  an  inn.  The  old  man  was  ■ 
upset;  it  was  a real  grief  to  him  that  Christophe’s  first  meal  ; 
in  the  place  should  not  have  been  in  his  house;  such  small  ' 
things  were  of  vast  importance  to  his  fond  heart.  Christophe,  ] 
who  understood  him,  was  amused  by  it  secretly,  and  loved  him  < 
the  more  for  it.  And  to  console  him  he  assured  him  that  he  • 
had  appetite  enough  for  two  breakfasts;  and  he  proved  his  ! 
assertion. 

All  his  troubles  had  gone  from  his  mind;  he  felt  that  he 
was  among  true  friends  and  he  began  to  recover.  He  told 
them  about  his  journey  and  his  rebuffs  in  a humorous  way; 
he  looked  like  a schoolboy  on  holiday.  Schulz  beamed  and 
devoured  him  with  his  eyes  and  laughed  heartily. 

It  was  not  long  before  conversation  turned  upon  the  secret 
bond  that  united  the  three  of  them : Christophe’s  music.  Schulz 
was  longing  to  hear  Christophe  play  some  of  his  compositions; 


REVOLT 


53? 


but  he  dared  not  ask  him  to  do  so.  Christophe  was  striding 
about  the  room  and  talking.  Schulz  watched  him  whenever 
he  went  near  the  open  piano;  and  he  prayed  inwardly  that  he 
might  stop  at  it.  The  same  thought  was  in  Kunz.  Their 
hearts  beat  when  they  saw  him  sit  down  mechanically  on  the 
piano  stool,  without  stopping  talking,  and  then  without  looking 
at  the  instrument  run  his  fingers  over  the  keys  at  random.  As 
Schulz  expected  hardly  had  Christophe  struck  a few  arpeggios 
than  the  sound  took  possession  of  him;  he  went  on  striking 
chords  and  still  talking;  then  there  came  whole  phrases;  and 
then  he  stopped  talking  and  began  to  play.  The  old  men  ex- 
changed a meaning  glance,  sly  and  happy. 

“Do  you  know  that?”  asked  Christophe,  playing  one  of  his 

JjXcdcv, 

“Do  I know  it?”  said  Schulz  delightedly.  Christophe  said 
without  stopping,  half  turning  his  head: 

“ Euh ! It  is  not  very  good.  Your  piano ! ” The  old  man 
was  very  contrite.  He  begged  pardon: 

“ It  is  old,”  he  said  humbly.  " It  is  like  myself.”  Chris- 
tophe turned  round  and  looked  at  the  old  man,  who  seemed  to 
be  asking  pardon  for  his  age,  took  both  his  hands,  and  laughed. 
He  looked  into  his  honest  eyes: 

“ Oh ! ” he  said,  “ you  are  younger  than  I.”  Schulz  laughed 
aloud  and  spoke  of  his  old  body  and  his  infirmities. 

“ Ta,  ta,  ta ! ” said  Christophe,  “ I don’t  mean  that ; I know 
what  I am  saying.  It  is  true,  isn’t  it,  Kunz  ? ” 

(They  had  already  suppressed  the  “Herr.”) 

Kunz  agreed  emphatically. 

Schulz  tried  to  find  the  same  indulgence  for  his  piano. 

“ It  has  still  some  beautiful  notes,”  he  said  timidly. 

And  he  touched  them— four  or  five  notes  that  were  fairly 
true,  half  an  octave  in  the  middle  register  of  the  instrument. 
Christophe  understood  that  it  was  an  old  friend  and  he  said 
kindly, — ^thinking  of  Schulz’s  eyes: 

“ Yes.  It  still  has  beautiful  eyes.” 

Schulz’s  face  lit  up.  He  launched  out  on  an  involved  eulogy 
of  his  old  piano,  but  he  dropped  immediately,  for  Christophe 
had  begun  to  play  again.  Lieder  followed  Lieder;  Christophe 
sang  them  softly.  With  tears  in  his  eyes  Schulz  followed  his 


638 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


every  movement.  With  his  hands  folded  on  his  stomach  Kunz 
closed  his  eyes  the  better  to  enjoy  it.  From  time  to  time 
Christophe  turned  beaming  towards  the  two  old  men  who  were 
absolutely  delighted,  and  he  said  with  a naive  enthusiasm  at 
which  they  never  thought  of  laughing : 

Hein ! It  is  beautiful ! . . . And  this ! What  do  you 

say  about  this?  . . . And  this  again!  . . . This  is 

the  most  beautiful  of  all.  . . . Now  I will  play  you  some- 
thing which  will  make  your  hair  curl.  . . ^ 

As  he  was  finishing  a dreamy  fragment  the  cuckoo  clock 
began  to  call.  Christophe  started  and  shouted  angrily.  Kunz 
was  suddenly  awakened  and  rolled  his  eyes  fearfully.  Even 
Schulz  did  not  understand  at  first.  Then  when  he  saw  Chris- 
tophe shaking  his  fist  at  the  calling  bird  and  shouting  to  some- 
one in  the  name  of  Heaven  to  take  the  idiot  and  throw  it 
away,  the  ventriloquist  specter,  he  too  discovered  for  the  first 
time  in  his  life  that  the  noise  was  intolerable;  and  he  took  a 
chair  and  tried  to  mount  it  to  take  down  the  spoil-sport.  But  ' 
he  nearly  fell  and  Kunz  would  not  let  him  try  again;  he  called  ‘ 
Salome.  She  came  without  hurrying  herself,  as  usual,  and  t 
was  staggered  to  find  the  clock  thrust  into  her  hands,  which  \ 
Christophe  in  his  impatience  had  taken  down  himself.  ; 

What  am  I to  do  with  it  ? ” she  asked.  : 

Whatever  you  like.  Take  it  away ! Don’t  let  us  see  it  • 
again ! ” said  Schulz,  no  less  impatient  than  Christophe.  | 

(He  wondered  how  he  could  have  borne  such  a horror  for  j 
so  long.)  1 

Salome  thought  that  they  were  surely  all  cracked.  ^ 

The  music  went  on.  Hours  passed.  Salome  came  and  an-  t 
nounced  that  dinner  was  served.  Schulz  bade  her  be  silent.  ‘ 
She  came  again  ten  minutes  later,  then  once  again,  ten  minutes 
after  that;  this  time  she  was  beside  herself  and  boiling  with 
rage  while  she  tried  to  look  unperturbed;  she  stood  firmly  in 
the  middle  of  the  room  and  in  spite  of  Schulz’s  desperate  ges- 
tures she  asked  in  a brazen  voice: 

Do  the  gentlemen  prefer  to  eat  their  dinner  cold  or  burned  ? 

It  does  not  matter  to  me.  I only  await  your  orders.” 

Schulz  was  confused  by  her  scolding  and  tried  to  retort; 
but  Christophe  burst  out  laughing.  Kunz  followed  his  exam- 


KEVOLT 


539 


pie  and  at  length  Schulz  laughed  too.  Salome,  satisfied  with 
the  effect  she  had  produced,  turned  on  her  heels  with  the  air  ot 
a queen  who  is  graciously  pleased  to  pardon  her  repentant 

“ That’s  a good  creature ! ” said  Christophe,  getting  up  from 
the  piano.  “ She  is  right.  There  is  nothing  so  intolerable  as 
an  audience  arriving  in  the  middle  of  a concert.  j v • 

They  sat  at  table.  There  was  an  enormous  and  delicious 
repast.  Schulz  had  touched  Salome’s  vanity  and  she  only 
asked  an  excuse  to  display  her  art.  There  was  no  lack  of 
opportunity  for  her  to  exercise  it.  The  old  friends  were  tre- 
mendous feeders.  Kunz  was  a different  man  at  table;  he  ex- 
panded like  a sun;  he  would  have  done  well  as  a sign  for  a 
restaurant.  Schulz  was  no  less  susceptible  to  good  cheer;  but 
his  ill  health  imposed  more  restraint  upon  him.  It  is  true  that 
generally  he  did  not  pay  much  heed  to  that;  and  he  had  to 
for  it.  In  that  event  he  did  not  complain,  if  he  were  ill  at 
least  he  knew  why.  Like  Kunz  he  had  recipes  of  his  own 
handed  down  from  father  to  son  for  generations.  Salom^e  was 
accustomed  therefore  to  work  for  connoisseurs.  But  on  this  oc- 
casion she  had  contrived  to  include  all  her  masterpieces  in  one 
menu;  it  was  like  an  exhibition  of  the  unforgettable  cooking 
of  Germany,  honest  and  unsophisticated,  with  all  the  scents 
of  all  the  herbs,  and  thick  sauces,  substantial  soups,  perfect 
stews,  wonderful  carp,  sauerkraut,  geese,  plain  cakes,  aniseed 
and  caraway  seed  bread.  Christophe  was  in  raptures  with  his 
mouth  full,  and  he  ate  like  an  ogre ; he  had  the  formidable 
capacity  of  his  father  and  grandfather,  who  would  have  de- 
voured a whole  goose.  But  he  could  live  just  as  well  for  a whole 
week  on  bread  and  cheese,  and  cram  when  occasion  served 
Schulz  was  cordial  and  ceremonious  and  watched  him  with  kin 
eyes,  and  plied  him  with  all  the  wines  of  the  Ehine.^  Kunz 
was  shining  and  recognized  him  as  a brother.  Salomes  large 
face  was  beaming  happily.  At  first  she  had  been  deceived  when 
Christophe  came.  Schulz  had  spoken  about  him  so  much 
beforehand  that  she  had  fancied  him  as  an  Excellency,  laden 
with  letters  and  honors.  When  she  saw  him  she  cried  out . 

“What!  Is  that  all?”  , , , 

But  at  table  Christophe  won  her  good  graces;  she  had  never 


540 


JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 


seen  anybody  so  splendidly  do  justice  to  her  talent.  Instead 
of  going  back  to  her  kitchen  she  stayed  by  the  door  to  watch 
Christophe,  who  was  saying  all  sorts  of  absurd  things  without 
missing  a bite,  and  with  her  hands  on  her  hips  she  roared  with 
laughter.  They  were  all  glad  and  happy.  There  was  only 
one  shadow  over  their  joy : the  absence  of  Pottpetschmidt.  They 
often  returned  to  it. 

" Ah ! If  he  were  here ! How  he  would  eat ! How  he  would 
drink ! How  he  would  sing ! ” 

Their  praises  of  him  were  inexhaustible. 

“ If  only  Christophe  could  see  him ! . . . But  perhaps 

he  would  be  able  to.  Perhaps  Pottpetschmidt  would  return  in 
the  evening,  on  that  night  at  latest.  . . ■” 

“ Oh ! I shall  be  gone  to-night,”  said  Christophe. 

A shadow  passed  over  Schulz’s  beaming  face. 

“What!  Gone!”  he  said  in  a trembling  voice.  “But  you 
are  not  going.” 

“ Oh,  yes,”  said  Christophe  gailv.  “ I must  catch  the  tram 
to-night.” 

Schulz  was  in  despair.  He  had  counted  on  Christophe 
spending  the  night,  perhaps  several  nights,  in  his  house.  He 
murmured : 

“ No,  no.  You  can’t  go ! . . .” 

Hunz  repeated: 

“ And  Pottpetschmidt ! . . .” 

Christophe  looked  at  the  two  of  them ; he  was  touched  by 
the  dismay  on  their  kind  friendly  faces  and  said : 

“ How  good  you  are ! . . . If  vou  like  I will  go  to-mor- 

row morning.” 

Schulz  took  him  by  the  hand. 

“Ah!”  he  said.  “How  glad  I am!  Thank  you!  Thank 
you ! ” 

He  was  like  a child  to  whom  to-morrow  seems  so  far,  so  far, 
that  it  will  not  bear  thinking  on.  Christophe  was  not  going 
to-day;  to-day  was  theirs;  they  would  spend  the  whole  evening 
together;  he  would  sleep  under  his  roof;  that  was  all  that 
Schulz  saw;  he  would  not  look  further. 

They  became  merry  again.  Schulz  rose  suddenly,  looked 
very  solemn,  and  excitedly  and  slowly  proposed  the  toast  of 


EEVOLT 


their  guest,  who  had  given  him  the  immense  PJ /nd  honor 
of  visiting  the  little  town  and  his  humble  house ; he  dr  an  o is 
happy  return,  to  his  success,  to  his  glory,  to  every  ^ 

the  world,  which  with  all  his  heart  he  wished  him  And  then 
he  proposed  another  toast  “to  noble  music  —another  to  his 

old^friLd  Kunz,-another  to  i^'tnd  \he 

Pottpetschmidt.  Kunz  in  his  turn  drank  to  Schulz  and  the 
others,  and  Christophe,  to  bring  the  toasts  to  an  end,  proposed 
the  health  of  dame  Salome,  who  blushed  crimson.  Upon  that, 
without  giving  the  orators  time  to  reply,  he  began  a familiar 
song  which  the  two  old  men  took  up ; after  that  fnotlmr,  and 
then  another  for  three  parts  which  was  all  about  friendship  and 
music  and  wine;  the  whole  was  accompanied  by  loud  laughter 
and  the  clink  of  glasses  continually  touching.  ,,  , , , 

It  was  half-past  three  when  they  got  up  from  the  table. 
They  were  rather  drowsy.  Kunz  sank  into  a chair;  he  was 
longing  to  have  a sleep.  Schulz’s  legs  were  worn  out  by  his 
exertions  of  the  morning  and  by  standing  for  his  toasts.  They 
both  hoped  that  Christophe  would  sit  at  the  piano  again  an 
go  on  playing  for  hours.  But  the  terrible  boy,  who  was  in  fine 
form,  first  struck  two  or  three  chords  on  the  piano,  shut  it 
abruptly,  looked  out  of  the  window,  and  asked  if  they  could 
not  go  for  a walk  until  supper.  The  country  attracted  him. 
Kunz  showed  little  enthusiasm,  but  Schulz  at  once  thought  it  an 
excellent  idea  and  declared  that  he  must  show  their  guest  the 
walk  round  the  Schonluchwdlder.  Kunz  made  a face;  but  he  did 
not  protest  and  got  up  with  the  others;  he  was  as  desirous  as 
Schulz  of  showing  Christophe  the  beauties  of  the  country. 

They  went  out.  Christophe  took  Schulz’s  arm  and  made  him 
walk  a little  faster  than  the  old  man  liked.  Kunz  followed 
mopping  his  brow.  They  talked  gaily.  The  people  standing 
at  their  doors  watched  them  pass  and  thought  that  Herr  Pro- 
fessor Schulz  looked  like  a young  man.  When  they  left  the 
town  they  took  to  the  fields.  Kunz  complained  of  the  heat. 
Christophe  was  merciless  and  declared  that  the  air  was  ex- 
quisite. Fortunately  for  the  two  old  men,  they  stopped  fr^ 
quently  to  argue  and  they  forgot  the  length  of  the  walk  in  their 
conversation.  They  went  into  the  woods.  Schulz  recited  verses 
of  Goethe  and  Mdrike.  Christophe  loved  poetry,  but  he  could 


r 


542 


JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 


not  remember  any,  and  while  he  listened  he  stepped  into  a 
vague  dream  in  which  music  replaced  the  words  and  made  him 
forget  them.  He  admired  Schulzes  memory.  What  a difference 
there  was  between  the  vivacity  of  mind  of  this  poor  rich  old 
man,  almost  impotent,  shut  up  in  his  room  for  a great  part  of 
the  year,  shut  up  in  his  little  provincial  town  almost  all  his 
life, — and  Hassler,  young,  famous,  in  the  very  thick  of  the 
artistic  movement,  and  touring  over  all  Europe  for  his  concerts 
and  yet  interested  in  nothing  and  unwilling  to  know  anything ! 
Not  only  was  Schulz  in  touch  with  every  manifestation  of  the 
art  of  the  day  that  Christophe  knew,  but  he  knew  an  immense 
amount  about  musicians  of  the  past  and  of  other  countries  of 
whom  Christophe  had  never  heard.  His  memory  was  a great 
reservoir  in  which  all  the  beautiful  waters  of  the  heavens  were 
collected.  Christophe  never  wearied  of  dipping  into  it,  and 
Schulz  was  glad  of  Christophers  interest.  He  had  sometimes 
found  willing  listeners  or  docile  pupils,  but  he  had  never  yet  ’ 
found  a young  and  ardent  heart  with  which  he  could  share  ' 
his  enthusiasms,  which  sometimes  so  swelled  in  him  that  he  ' 
was  like  to  choke. 

They  had  become  the  best  friends  in  the  world  when  un-  ■ 
happily  the  old  man  chanced  to  express  his  admiration  for  ' 
Brahms.  Christophe  was  at  once  coldly  angry;  he  dropped 
Schulzes  arm  and  said  harshly  that  anyone  who  loved  Brahms 
could  not  be  his  friend.  That  threw  cold  water  on  their  happi-  : 
ness.  Schulz  was  too  timid  to  argue,  too  honest  to  lie,  and  \ 
murmured  and  tried  to  explain.  But  Christophe  stopped  him : I 
Enough ! I 

It  was  so  cutting  that  it  was  impossible  to  reply.  There  was  i 
an  icy  silence.  They  walked  on.  The  two  old  men  dared  not  ‘ 
look  at  each  other.  Kunz  coughed  and  tried  to  take  up  the 
conversation  again  and  to  talk  of  the  woods  and  the  weather; 
but  Christophe  sulked  and  would  not  talk  and  only  answered 
with  monosyllables.  Kunz,  finding  no  response  from  him,  tried 
to  break  the  silence  by  talking  to  Schulz;  but  Schulz’s  throat 
was  dry,  he  could'  not  speak.  Christophe  watched  him  out  of 
the  corner  of  his  eyes  and  he  wanted  to  laugh;  he  had  forgiven 
him  already.  He  had  never  been  seriously  angry  with  him; 
he  even  thought  it  brutal  to  make  the  poor  old  man  sad;  but 


EEVOLT 


he  abused  his  power  and  would  not  appear  to  go  back  on  what 
he  had  said.  They  remained  so  until  they  left  the  woods; 
nothing  was  to  be  heard  but  the  weary  steps  of  the  two  down- 
cast old  men;  Christophe  whistled  through  his  teeth  and  pre- 
tended not  to  see  them.  Suddenly  he  could  bear  it  no  longer. 
He  burst  out  laughing,  turned  towards  Schulz  and  gripped  his 
arm: 

My  dear  good  old  Schulz ! he  said,  looking  at  him  affec- 
tionately. IsnT  it  beautiful  ? Isn’t  it  beautiful  ? ” 

He  was  speaking  of  the  country  and  the  fine  day,  but  his 
laughing  eyes  seemed  to  say: 

You  are  good.  I am  a brute.  Forgive  me!  I love  you 
much.” 

The  old  man’s  heart  melted.  It  was  as  though  the  sun  had 
shone  again  after  an  eclipse.  But  a short  time  passed  befo^^ 
he  could  utter  a word.  Christophe  took  his  arm  and  went  on 
talking  to  him  more  amiably  than  ever ; in  his  eagerness  he  went 
faster  and  faster  without  noticing  the  strain  upon  his  two  com- 
panions. Schulz  did  not  complain;  he  did  not  even  notice  his 
fatigue;  he  was  so  happy.  He  knew  that  he  would  have  to 
pay  for  that  day’s  rashness;  but  he  thought: 

So  much  the  worse  for  to-morrow ! When  Tie  gone  I 
shall  have  plenty  of  time  to  rest.” 

But  Kunz,  who  was  not  so  excited,  followed  fifteen  yards 
behind  and  looked  a pitiful  object.  Christophe  noticed  it  at 
last.  He  begged  his  pardon  confusedly  and  proposed  that  they 
should  lie  down  in  a meadow  in  the  shade  of  the  poplars.  Of 
course  Schulz  acquiesced  without  a thought  for  the  effect  it 
might  have  on  his  bronchitis.  Fortunately  Kunz  thought  of 
it  for  him;  or  at  least  he  made  it  an  excuse  for  not  running 
any  risk  from  the  moisture  of  the  grass  when  he  was  in  such 
a perspiration.  He  suggested  that  they  should  take  the  train 
back  to  the  town  from  a station  close  by.  They  did  so.  In 
spite  of  their  fatigue  they  had  to  hurry,  so  as  not  to  be  late, 
and  they  reached  the  station  just  as  the  train  came  in. 

At  the  sight  of  them  a big  man  threw  himself  out  of  the  door 
of  a carriage  and  roared  the  names  of  Schulz  and  Kunz,  to- 
gether with  all  their  titles  and  qualities,  and  he  waved  his  arms 
like  a madman.  Schulz  and  Kunz  shouted  in  reply  and  also 


JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 


waved  their  arms;  they  rushed  to  the  big  man’s  compartment 
and  he  ran  to  meet  them^  jostling  the  people  on  the  platform. 
Christophe  was  amazed  and  ran  after  them  asking: 

What  is  it  ? ” 

And  the  others  shouted  exultantly: 

It  is  Pottpetschmidt ! ” 

The  name  did  not  convey  much  to  him.  He  had  forgotten 
the  toasts  at  dinner.  Pottpetschmidt  in  the  carriage  and  Schulz 
and  Kunz  on  the  step  were  making  a deafening  noise^,  they  were 
marveling  at  their  encounter.  They  climbed  into  the  train  as 
it  was  going.  Schulz  introduced  Christophe.  Pottpetschmidt 
bowed  as  stiff  as  a poker  and  his  features  lost  all  expression; 
then  when  the  formalities  were  over  he  caught  hold  of  Chris- 
tophe’s  hand  and  shook  it  five  or  six  times^  as  though  he  were 
^tj-ying  to  pull  his  arm  out,  and  then  began  to  shout  again. 
Christophe  was  able  to  make  out  that  he  thanked  God  and  his 
stars  for  the  extraordinary  meeting.  That  did  not  keep  him* 
from  slapping  his  thigh  a moment  later  and  crying  ,out  upon; 
the  misfortune  of  having  had  to  go  away — he  who  never  went' 
away — just  when  the  Herr  Kapellmeister  was  coming.  Schulz’s 
telegram  had  only  reached  him  that  morning  an  hour  after  the? 
train  went;  he  was  asleep  when  it  arrived  and  they  had  not 
thought  it  worth  while  to  wake  him.  He  had  stormed  at  the 
hotel  people  all  morning.  He  was  still  storming.  He  had 
sent  his  patients  away,  cut  his  business  appointments  and  taken 
the  first  train  in  his  haste  to  return,  but  the  infernal  train  had 
missed  the  connection  on  the  main  line;  Pottpetschmidt  had  had: 
to  wait  three  hours  at  a station;  he  had  exhausted  all  the* 
expletives  in  his  vocabulary  and  fully  twenty  times  had  nar-' 
rated  his  misadventures  to  other  travelers  who  were  also  wait-; 
ing,  and  a porter  at  the  station.  At  last  he  had  started  again. 
He  was  fearful  of  arriving  too  late  . . . But,  thank  God ! 

Thank  God!  . . . 

He  took  Christophe’s  hands  again  and  crushed  them  in  his 
vast  paws  with  their  hairy  fingers.  He  was  fabulously  stout 
and  tall  in  proportion;  he  had  a square  head,  close  cut  red 
hair,  a clean-shaven  pock-marked  face,  big  eyes,  large  nose, 
thin  lips,  a double  chin,  a short  neck,  a monstrously  wide  back, 
a stomach  like  a barrel,  arms  thrust  out  by  his  body,  enormous 


EEVOLT 

feet  and  hands ; a gigantic  mass  of  flesh,  deformed  by  excess  in 
eating  and  drinking;  one  of  those  human  tobacco-jars  that  one 
sees  sometimes  rolling  along  the  streets  in  the  towns  of  Bavaria,, 
which  keep  the  secret  of  that  race  of  men  that  is  produced  by 
a system  of  gorging  similar  to  that  of  the  Strasburg  geese.  He 
listened  with  joy  and  warmth  like  a pot  of  butter,  and  with 
his  two  hands  on  his  outstretched  knees,  or  on  those  of  his 
neighbors,  he  never  stopped  talking,  hurling  consonants  into 
the  air  like  a catapult  and  making  them  roll  along.  Occa- 
sionally he  would  have  a fit  of  laughing  which  made  him  shake 
all  over ; he  would  throw  back  his  head,  open  his  mouth,  snort- 
ing, gurgling,  choking.  His  laughter  would  infect  Schulz  and 
Kunz  and  when  it  was  over  they  would  lool^  at  Christophe  as 
they  dried  their  eyes.  They  seemed  to  be  asking  him : 

Hein ! . . . And  what  do  you  say  ? . s 

Christophe  said  nothing ; he  thought  fearfully : 

^^And  this  monster  sings  my  music 

They  went  home  with  Schulz.  Christophe  hoped  to  avoid 
Pottpetschmidt^s  singing  and  made  no  advances  in  spite  of 
Pottpetschmidfs  hints.  He  was  itching  to  be  heard.  But 
Schulz  and  Kunz  were  too  intent  on  showing  their  friend  off; 
Christophe  had  to  submit.  He  sat  at  the  piano  rather  ungra- 
ciously; he  thought: 

My  good  man,  my  good  man,  you  donT  know  what  is  in 
store  for  you ; have  a care ! I will  spare  you  nothing.’’ 

He  thought  that  he  would  hurt  Schulz  and  he  was  angry 
at  that;  but  he  was  none  the  less  determined  to  hurt  him 
rather  than  have  this  Falstaff  murdering  his  music.  He  was 
spared  the  pain  of  hurting  his  old  friend:  the  fat  man  had  an 
admirable  voice.  At  the  first  bars  Christophe  gave  a start  of 
surprise.  Schulz,  who  never  took  his  eyes  off  him,  trembled ; he 
thought  that  Christophe  was  dissatisfied;  and  he  was  only  re- 
assured when  he  saw  his  face  grow  brighter  and  brighter  as  he 
went  on  playing.  He  was  lit  up  by  the  reflection  of  Chris- 
tophe’s  delight;  and  when  the  song  was  finished  and  Christophe 
turned  round  and  declared  that  he  had  never  heard  any  of  his 
songs  sung  so  well,  Schulz  found  a joy  in  all  sweeter  and  greater 
than  Christophe’s  in  his  satisfaction,  sweeter  and  greater  than 
Pottpetschmidt’s  in  his  triumph;  for  they  had  only  their  own 


546 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


ploasure,  and  Schulz  had  that  of  his  two  friends.  They  went  on 
with  the  music.  Christophe  cried  aloud;  he  could  not  under- 
stand how  so  ponderous  and  common  a creature  could  succeed 
in  reading  the  idea  of  his  Lieder.  No  doubt  there  were  not 
exactly  all  the  shades  of  meaning,  hut  there  was  the  impulse 
and  the  passion  which  he  had  never  quite  succeeded  in  impart- 
ing to  professional  singers.  He  looked  at  Pottpetschmidt  and 
wondered : 

“ Does  he  really  feel  that  ? ” 

But  he  could  not  see  in  his  eyes  any  other  light  than  that 
of  satisfied  vanity.  Some  unconscious  force  stirred  in  that  solid 
flesh.  The  blind  passion  was  like  an  army  fighting  without 
knowing  against  whom  or  why.  The  spirit  of  the  Lieder  took 
possession  of  it  and  it  obeyed  gladly,  for  it  had  need  of  action, 
4.and,  left  to  itself,  it  never  would  have  known  how. 

Christophe  fancied  that  on  the  day  of  the  Creation  the  Great . 
Sculptor  did  not  take  very  much  trouble  to  put  in  order  the_ 
scattered  members  of  his  rough-hewn  creatures,  and  that  He^ 
had  adjusted  them  anyhow  without  bothering  to  find  out, 
whether  they  were  suited  to  each  other,  and  so  every  one  was 
made  up  of  all  sorts  of  pieces;  and  one  man  was  scattered' 
among  five  or  six  different  men;  his  brain  was  with  one,  his. 
heart  with  another,  and  the  body  belonging  to  his  soul  with  yet 
another;  the  instrument  was  on  one  side,  the  performer  on  the 
other.  Certain  creatures  remained  like  wonderful  violins,  for-, 
ever  shut  up  in  their  cases,  for  want  of  anyone  with  the  art  to^ 
play  them.  And  those  who  were  fit  to  play  them  were  foundj 
all  their  lives  to  put  up  with  wretched  scraping  fiddles.  He* 
had  all  the  more  reason  for  thinking  so  as  he  was  furious  with 
himself  for  never  having  been  able  properly  to  sing  a page  of 
music.  He  had  an  untuned  voice  and  could  never  hear  himself 
without  disgust. 

However,  intoxicated  by  his  success,  Pottpetschmidt  began 
to  “put  expression”  into  Christophers  Lieder,  that  is  to  say 
he  substituted  his  own  for  Christophe’s.  Naturally  he  did  not 
think  that  the  music  gained  by  the  change,  and  he  grew  gloomy. 
Schulz  saw  it.  His  lack  of  the  critical  faculty  and  his  admira- 
tion for  his  friends  would  not  have  allowed  him  of  his  own 


EEVOLT 


547 


accord  to  set  it  down  to  Pottpetschmidt’s  bad  taste.  But  his 
affection  for  Christophe  made  him  perceptive  of  the  young 
man’s  finest  shades  of  thought;  he  was  no  longer  in  himself, 
he  was  in  Christophe;  and  he  too  suffered  from  Pottpetschmidt’s 
affectations.  He  tried  hard  to  stop  his  going  down  that  peril- 
ous slope.  It  was  not  easy  to  silence  Pottpetschmidt.  Schulz 
found  it  enormously  difficult,  when  the  singer  had  exhausted 
Christophe’s  repertory,  to  keep  him  from  breaking  out  into 
the  lucubrations  of  mediocre  compositions  at  the  mention  of 
whose  names  Christophe  curled  up  and  bristled  like  a porcu- 
pine. 

Fortunately  the  announcement  of  supper  muzzled  Pottpet- 
schmidt. Another  field  for  his  valor  was  opened  for  him , 
he  had  no  rival  there;  and  Christophe,  who  was  a little  weary 
with  his  exploits  in  the  afternoon,  made  no  attempt  to  vie  with 
him. 

It  was  getting  late.  They  sat  round  the  table  and  the  three 
friends  watched  Christophe;  they  drank  in  his  words.  It 
seemed  very  strange  to  Christophe  to  find  himself  in  the  remote 
little  town  among  these  old  men  whom  he  had  never  seen  until 
that  day  and  to  be  more  intimate  with  them  than  if  they  had 
been  his  relations.  He  thought  how  fine  it  would  be  for  an 
artist  if  he  could  know  of  the  unknown  friends  whom  his 
ideas  find  in  the  world, — ^how  gladdened  his  heart  wo^d  be  and 
how  fortified  he  would  be  in  his  strength.  But  he^  is  rarely 
that;  every  onejwes  jn^ dies  alone,  fearing  to  say  what  he 
feels  theTnori^  he  feels  and  the  more  he  needs  to  express  it. 
Vulgar  flatterers  have  no  difficulty  in  speaking.  Those  who 
love  most  have  to  force  their  lips  open  to  say  that  they  love. 
And  so  he  must  be  grateful  indeed  to  those  who  dare  to  speak ; 
they  are  unconsciously  collaborators  with  the  artist. — Chris- 
tophe was  filled  with  gratitude  for  old  Schulz.  He  did  not  con- 
found him  with  his  two  friends;  he  felt  that  he  was  the  soul 
of  the  little  group ; the  others  were  only  reflections  of  that  living 
fire  of  goodness  and  love.  The  friendship  that  Kunz  and 
Pottpetschmidt  had  for  him  was  very  different.  Kunz  was 
selfish;  music  gave  him  a comfortable  satisfaction  like  a fat 
( cat  when  it  is  stroked.  Pottpetschmidt  found  in  it  the  pleasure 


I 


548 


JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 


of  tickled  vanity  and  physical  exercise.  Neither  of  them  trou- 
bled to  understand  him.  But  Schulz  absolutely  forgot  himself;' 
he  loved. 

It  was  late.  The  two  friends  went  away  in  the  night.  Chris- 
tophe  was  left  alone  with  Schulz.  He  said : 

Now  I will  play  for  you  alone.^^  ^ 

He  sat  at  the  piano  and  played, — as  he  knew  how  to  play^ 
when  he  had  some  one  dear  to  him  by  his  side.  He  played  his^ 
latest  compositions.  The  old  man  was  in  ecstasies.  He  sat 
near  Christophe  and  never  took  his  eyes  from  him  and  held 
his  breath.  In  the  goodness  of  his  heart  he  was  incapable  of 
keeping  the  smallest  happiness  to  himself,  and  in  spite  of 
himself  he  said: 

Ah ! What  a pity  Kunz  is  not  here ! 

That  irritated  Christophe  a little. 

An  hour  passed;  Christophe  was  still  playing;  they  had  not 
exchanged  a word.  When  Christophe  had  finished  neither 
spoke  a word.  There  was  silence,  the  house,  the  street,  was 
asleep.  Christophe  turned  and  saw  that  the  old  man  was  weep- 
ing; he  got  up  and  went  and  embraced  him.  They  talked  in 
whispers  in  the  stillness  of  the  night.  The  clock  ticked  dully' 
in  the  next  room.  Schulz  talked  in  a whisper,  with  his  hands 
clasped,  and  leaning  forward;  he  was  telling  Christophe,  in 
answer  to  his  questions,  about  his  life  and  his  sorrow;  at  every. 
turn  he  was  .ashamed  of  complaining  and  had  to  say : 

I am  wrong  ...  I have  no  right  to  complain  . . 

Everybody  has  been  very  good  to  me  . . P \ 

And  indeed  he  was  not  complaining;  it  was  only  an  in-‘ 
voluntary  melancholy  emanating  from  the  dull  story  of  his! 
lonely  life.  At  the  most  sorrowful  moments  he  wove  into  iti 
professions  of  faith  vaguely  idealistic  and  very  sentimental 
which  amazed  Christophe,  though  it  would  have  been  too  cruel 
to  contradict  him.  At  bottom  there  was  in  Schulz  not  so  much 
a firm  belief  as  a passionate  desire  to  believe — an  uncertain  hope 
to  which  he  clung  as  to  a buoy.  He  sought  the  confirmation  of 
it  in  Christophers  eyes.  Christophe  understood  the  appeal  in 
the  eyes  of  his  friend,  who  clung  to  him  with  touching  confi- 
dence, imploring  him, — and  dictating  his  answer.  Then  he 
spoke  of  the  calm  faith  or  strength,  sure  of  itself,  words  which 


EEVOLT 


549 


the  old  man  was  expecting,  and  they  comforted  him.  The 
old  man  and  the  young  had  forgotten  the  years  that  lay  between 
themj  they  were  near  each  other,  like  brothers  of  the  same 
age,  loving  and  helping  each  other;  the  weaker  sought  the  sup- 
port of  the  stronger;  the  old  man  took  refuge  in  the  young 
man’s  soul. 

They  parted  after  midnight;  Christophe  had  to  get  up  early 
to  catch  the  train  by  which  he  had  come.  And  so  he  did  not 
loiter  as  he  undressed.  The  old  man  had  prepared  his  guest’s 
room  as  though  for  a visit  of  several  months.  He  had  put  a 
bowl  of  roses  on  the  table  and  a branch  of  laurel.  He  had 
put  fresh  blotting  paper  on  the  bureau.  During  the  morning 
he  had  had  an  upright  piano  carried  up.  On  the  shelf  by  the 
bed  he  had  placed  books  chosen  from  among  his  most  precious 
and  beloved.  There  was  no  detail  that  he  had  not  lovingly 
thought  out.  But  it  was  a waste  of  trouble;  Christophe  saw 
nothing.  He  flung  himself  on  his  bed  and  went  sound  asleep 
at  once. 

Schulz  could  not  sleep.  He  was  pondering  the  joy  that  he 
had  had  and  the  sorrow  he  must  have  at  the  departure  of  his 
friend.  He  was  turning  over  in  his  mind  the  words  that  had 
been  spoken.  He  was  thinking  that  his  dear  Christophe  was 
sleeping  near  him  on  the  other  side  of  the  wall  against  which 
his  bed  lay.  He  was  worn  out,  stiff  all  over,  depressed;  he 
felt  that  he  had  caught  cold  during  the  walk  and  that  he  was 
going  to  have  a relapse ; but  he  had  only  one  thought : 

“ If  only  I can  hold  out  until  he  has  gone ! ” And  he  was 
fearful  of  having  a flt  of  coughing  and  waking  Christophe. 
He  was  full  of  gratitude  to  God,  and  began  to  compose  verses 
to  the  song  of  old  Simeon:  “Nunc  dimittis  . . He  got 

up  in  a sweat  to  write  the  verses  down  and  sat  at  his  desk 
until  he  had  carefully  copied  them  out  with  an  affectionate  dedi- 
cation, and  his  signature,  and  the  date  and  hour.  Then  he 
lay  down  again  with  a shiver  and  could  not  get  warm  all  night. 

Dawn  came.  Schulz  thought  regretfully  of  the'  dawn  of  the 
day  before.  But  he  was  angry  with  himself  for  spoiling  with 
such  thoughts  the  few  minutes  of  happiness  left  to  him;  he 
knew  that  on  the  morrow  he  would  regret  the  time  fleeting  then, 
and  he  tried  not  to  waste  any  of  it.  He  listened,  eager  for 


550 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


the  least  sound  in  the  next  room.  But  Christophe  did  not  stir. 
He  lay  still  just  as  he  had  gone  to  bed;  he  had  not  moved. 
Half-past  six  rang  and  he  still  slept.  Nothing  would  have  been 
easier  than  to  make  him  miss  the  train^  and  doubtless  he  would 
have  taken  it  with  a laugh.  But  the  old  man  was  too  scru- 
pulous to  use  a friend  so  without  his  consent.  In  vain  did  he 
say  to  himself: 

^^It  will  not  be  my  fault.  I could  not  help  it.  It  will  be 
enough  to  say  nothing.  And  if  he  does  not  wake  in  time  I 
shall  have  another  whole  day  with  him.^^ 

He  answered  himself: 

No,  I have  no  right.^^ 

And  he  thought  it  his  duty  to  go  and  wake  him.  He  knocked 
at  his  door.  Christophe  did  not  hear  at  first;  he  had  to  knock 
again.  That  made  the  old  man’s  heart  thump  as  he  thought: 

Ah ! How  well  he  sleeps ! He  would  stay  like  that  till  mid- 
day! . . 

At  last  Christophe  replied  gaily  through  the  partition.  When 
he  learned  the  time  he  cried  out;  he  was  heard  bustling  about 
his  room,  noisily  dressing  himself,  singing  scraps  of  melody, 
while  he  chattered  with  Schulz  through  the  wall  and  cracked 
jokes  while  the  old  man  laughed  in  spite  of  his  sorrow.  The 
door  opened ; Christophe  appeared,  fresh,  rested,  and  happy ; he 
had  no  thought  of  the  pain  he  was  causing.  In  reality  there 
was  no  hurry  for  him  to  go ; it  would  have  cost  him  nothing  to 
stay  a few  days  longer ; and  it  would  have  given  Schulz  so  much 
pleasure!  But  Christophe  could  not  know  that.  Besides,  al- 
though he  was  very  fond  of  the  old  man,  he  was  glad  to  go; 
he  was  worn  out  by  the  day  of  perpetual  conversation,  by  these 
people  who  clung  to  him  in  desperate  fondness.  And  then  he 
was  young,  he  thought  there  would  be  plenty  of  time  to  meet 
again ; he  was  not  going  to  the  other  ends  of  the  earth ! — The 
old  man  knew  that  he  would  soon  be  much  farther  than  the 
other  ends  of  the  earth,  and  he  looked  at  Christophe  for  all 
eternity. 

In  spite  of  his  extreme  weariness  he  took  him  to  the  station. 
A fine  cold  rain  was  falling  noiselessly.  At  the  station  when 
he  opened  his  purse  Christophe  found  that  he  had  not  enough 
money  to  buy  his  ticket  home.  He  knew  that  Schulz  would 


kevolt 


551 


cladlv  lend  him  the  money,  but  he  would  not  ask  him  for 
Why?  Why  deny  those  who  love  you  the  oppor- 
tunity-the  happiness  of  doing  you  a service?  . . • He 

would  not  out  of  discretion— perhaps  out  of  vanity.  He  took 
a ticket  for  a station  on  the  way,  saying  that  he  would  do  the 
rest  of  the  journey  on  foot. 

The  time  for  leaving  came.  They  embraced  on  the  fo  - 
board  of  the  carriage.  Schulz  slipped  the  poem  he  had  writ- 
ten  during  the  night  into  Christophe’s  hand.  He  stayed  on  the 
platform  below  the  compartment.  They  had  nothing  more  t 
L to  each  other,  as  usual  when  good-byes  are  too  long  drawn 
out,  but  Schulz’s  eyes  went  on  speaking,  they  never  left  Chn 

tophe’s  face  until  the  train  went.  ot  i i i jfi. 

The  carriage  disappeared  round  a curve.  Schulz  was  left 

alone.  He  went  back  by  the  muddy  path;  he  dragged  along, 
suddenly  he  felt  all  his  weariness,  the  cold,  the  melancholy 
of  the  rainy  day.  He  was  hardly  able  to  reach  home  and  o 

go  upstairs  again.  Hardly  had  he  reached  his  room  than  he 

was  seized  with  an  attack  of  asthma  and  coughing.  Salome 
came  to  his  aid.  Through  his  involuntary  groans,  he  said; 

“What  luck!  . . . What  luck  that  I was  prepared  for 

it  ” He  felt  very  ill.  He  went  to  bed.  Salome 

fetched’ the  doctor.  In  bed  he  became  as  limp  as  a rag.  He 
could  not  move;  only  his  breast  was  heaving  and  panfang  like 
a million  billows.  His  head  was  heavy  and  feverish.  He  spent 
the  whole  day  in  living  through  the  day  before,  minute  by 
minute;  he  tormented  himself,  and  then  was  angry  with  himself 
for  complaining  after  so  much  happiness.  With  his  hands 
clasped  and  his  heart  big  with  love  he  thanked  God. 

Christophe  was  soothed  by  his  day  and  restored  to  confidence 
in  himself  by  the  affection  that  he  had  left  behind  him,  so 
be  returned  home.  When  he  had  gone  as  far  as  his  ticket  woidd 
take  him  he  got  out  blithely  and  took  to  the  road  on  foot.  ^ 
had  sixty  kilometers  to  do.  He  was  in  no  hurry  and  dawdled 
like  a school-boy.  It  was  April.  The  country  was  not  very 
far  on  The  leaves  were  unfolding  like  little  wrinkled  hands 
at  the  ends  of  the  black  branches;  the  apple  trees  were  in 
flower,  and  along  the  hedges  the  frail  eglantine  smiled. 


552 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


Above  the  leafless  forest,  where  a soft  greenish  down  was  be- 
ginning to  appear,  on  the  summit  of  a little  hill,  like  a trophy 
on  the  end  of  a lance,  there  rose  an  old  Eomanic  castle.  Three 
black  clouds  sailed  across  the  soft  blue  sky.  Shadows  chased 
over  the  country  in  spring,  showers  passed,  then  the  bright 
sun  shone  forth  again  and  the  birds  sang. 

Christophe  found  that  for  some  time  he  had  been  thinking 
of  Uncle  Gottfried.  He  had  not  thought  of  the  poor  man  for 
a long  time,  and  he  wondered  why  the  memory  of  him  should 
so  obstinately  obsess  him  now;  he  was  haunted  by  it  as  he 
walked  along  a path  along  a canal  that  reflected  the  poplars; 
and  the  image  of  his  uncle  was  so  actual  that  as  he  turned  a 
great  wall  he  thought  he  saw  him  coming  towards  him. 

The  sky  grew  dark.  A heavy  downpour  of  rain  and  hail  fell, 
and  thunder  rumbled  in  the  distance.  Christophe  was  near  a 
village;  he  could  see  its  pink  walls  and  red  roofs  among  the 
clumps  of  trees.  He  hurried  and  took  shelter  under  the  pro- 
jecting roof  of  the  nearest  house.  The  hail-stones  came  lashing 
‘down;  they  rang  out  on  the  tiles  and  fell  down  into  the  street 
like  pieces  of  lead.  The  ruts  were  overflowing.  Above  the 
blossoming  orchards  a rainbow  flung  its  brilliant  garish  scarf 
over  the  dark  blue  clouds. 

On  the  threshold  a girl  was  standing  knitting.  She. asked 
Christophe  to  enter.  He  accepted  the  invitation.  The  room 
into  which  he  stepped  was  used  as  a kitchen,  a dining-room, 
and  a bed-room.  At  the  back  a stew-pot  hung  over  a great 
fire.  A peasant  woman  who  was  cleaning  vegetables  wished 
Christophe  good-day,  and  bade  him  go  near  the  fire  to  dry 
himself.  The  girl  fetched  a bottle  of  wine  and  gave  him  to 
drink.  She  sat  on  the  other  side  of  the  table  and  went  on 
knitting,  while  at  the  same  time  she  looked  after  two  children 
who  were  playing  at  testing  each  other’s  eyes  with  those  grasses 
which  are  known  in  the  country  as  "thiefs”  or  “sweeps.” 
She  began  to  talk  to  Christophe.  It  was  only  after  a moment 
that  he  saw  that  she  was  blind.  She  was  not  pretty.  She  was 
a big  girl,  with  red  cheeks,  white  teeth,  and  strong  arms,  but^ 
her  features  were  irregular;  she  had  the  smiling,  rather  ex- 
pressionless air  of  many  blind  people,  and  also  their  mania  for 
talking  of  things  and  people  as  though  they  could  see  them. 


EEVOLT 


553 


At  first  Christophe  was  startled  and  wondered  if  she  were 
making  fun  of  him  when  she  said  that  he  looked  well  and  that 
the  country  was  looking  very  pretty.  But  after  looking  from 
the  blind  girl  to  the  woman  who  was  cleaning  the  vegetables 
he  saw  that  nobody  was  surprised  and  that  it  was  no  joke 
(there  was  nothing  to  joke  about  indeed).— The  two  women 
asked  Christophe  friendly  questions  as  to  whither  he  was 
going  and  whence  he  had  come.  The  blind  girl  joined  in  the 
conversation  with  a rather  exaggerated  eagerness;  she  agreed 
with,  or  commented  on,  Christophe’s  remarks  about  the  road 
and  the  fields.  Naturally  her  observations  were  often  wide  of 
the  mark.  She  seemed  to  be  trying  to  pretend  that  she  could 

see  as  well  as  he.  i ± ^ 

Other  members  of  the  family  came  in : a healthy  peasant  of 
thirty  and  his  young  wife.  Christophe  talked  to  them  all,  and 
watched  the  clearing  sky,  waiting  for  the  moment  to  set  out 
again.  The  blind  girl  hummed  an  air  while  she  plied  her  knit- 
ting needles.  The  air  brought  back  all  sorts  of  old  memories 

to  Christophe.  j 

“ What ! ” he  said.  “ You  know  that.  (Gottfried  had 

taught  her  it.)  . , , . i i. 

He  hummed  the  following  notes.  The  girl  began  to  laugh. 
She  sang  the  first  half  of  the  phrases  and  he  finished  them. 
He  had  just  got  up  to  go  and  look  at  the  weather  and  he  was 
walking  round  the  room,  mechanically  taking  stock  of  every 
corner  of  it,  when  near  the  dresser  he  saw  an  object  which 
made  him  start.  It  was  a long  twisted  stick,  the  handle  of 
which  was  roughly  carved  to  represent  a little  bent  man  bowing. 
Christophe  knew  it  well,  he  had  played  with  it  as  a child. 
He  pounced  on  the  stick  and  asked  in  a choking  voice; 

“ Where  did  you  get  this  ? . . . Where  did  you  get  it  ?” 

The  man  looked  up  and  said: 

« A friend  left  it  here— an  old  friend  who  is  dead.” 
Christophe  cried: 

“ Gottfried?” 

They  all  turned  and  asked: 

“How  do  you  know  . . . ?”  _ 

And  when  Christophe  told  them  that  GotHried  was  his  uncle, 
they  were  all  greatly  excited.  The  blind  girl  got  up ; her  ball 


654 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


of  wool  rolled  across  the  room;  she  stopped  her  work  and  took  ( 
Christophers  hands  and  said  in  a great  state  of  emotion:  | 

^^You  are  his  nephew  ?r^  ; 

They  all  talked  at  once.  Christophe  asked: 

But  how  . . . how  do  you  come  to  know  him  ? The 

man  replied: 

It  was  here  that  he  died.^’ 

They  sat  down  again,  and  when  the  excitement  had  gone 
down  a little,  the  mother  told,  as  she  went  on  with  her  work, 
that  Gottfried  used  to  go  to  the  house  for  many  years;  he  al- 
ways used  to  stay  there  on  his  way  to  and  fro  from  his  jour- 
neys. The  last  time  he  came — (it  was  in  last  July) — ^he 
seemed  very  tired,  and  when  he  took  ofiE  his  pack  it  was  some 
time  before  he  could  speak  a word,  but  they  did  not  take  any 
notice  of  it  because  they  were  used  to  seeing  him  like  that  when 
he  arrived  and  knew  that  he  was  short  of  breath.  He  did  not 
complain  either.  He  never  used  to  complain;  he  always  used 
to  find  some  happiness  in  the  most  unpleasant  things.  When 
he  was  doing  some  exhausting  work  he  used  to  be  glad  thinking 
how  good  it  would  be  in  bed  at  night,  and  when  he  was  ill  he 
used  to  say  how  good  it  would  be  when  he  was  not  ill  any 
longer.  ... 

^^And,  sir,  it  is  wrong  to  be  always  contenV^  added  the 
woman,  for  if  you  are  not  sorry  for  yourself,  nobody  will 
pity  you.  I always  complain  . . .^^ 

Well,  nobody  had  paid  any  attention  to  him.  They  had  even  i 

chaffed  him  about  looking  so  well  and  Modesta — (that  was  the  I 

blind  girhs  name) — who  had  just  relieved  him  of  his  pack  had  ' 

asked  him  if  he  was  never  going  to  be  tired  of  running  like  a i 

young  man.  He  smiled  in  reply,  for  he  could  not  speak.  He  ' 

sat  on  the  seat  by  the  door.  Everybody  went  about  their  work, 
the  men  to  the  fields,  the  woman  to  her  cooking.  Modesta  went 
near  the  seat,  she  stood  leaning  against  the  door  with  her 
knitting  in  her  hands  and  talked  to  Gottfried.  He  did  not 
reply;  she  did  not  ask  him  for  any  reply  and  told  him  every- 
thing that  had  happened  since  his  last  visit.  He  breathed 
with  difficulty  and  she  heard  him  trying  hard 'to  speak.  In- 
stead of  being  anxious  about  him  she  said : 


kevolt 


555 


“Don’t  speak.  Just  rest.  You  shall  talk  presently.  . . • 

How  can  people  tire  themselves  out  like  that  * • • • 

And  then  he  did  not  talk  or  even  try  to  talk.  She  went  on 
with  her  story  thinking  that  he  was  listening.  He  sighed  and 
said  nothing.  When  the  mother  came  a little  later  she  found 
Modesta  still  talking  and  Gottfried  motionless  on  the  seat  with 
his  head  flung  back  facing  the  sky;  for  some  “l^'^Jes  Modesta 
had  been  talking  to  a dead  man.  She  understood  then  th 
the  poor  man  had  been  trying  to  say  a few  words  before  he  di^ 
but  Ld  not  been  able  to;  then  with  his  sad  smile  he  had  ac- 
cepted that  and  had  closed  his  eyes  in  the  peace  of  the  summer 

^^The  rain  had  ceased.  The  daughter-in-law  went  to  the  stables, 
the  son  took  his  mattock  and  cleared  the  little  gutter  fron 
of  the  door  which  the  mud  had  obstructed.  Modesta  had  dis- 
appeared at  the  beginning  of  the  story  Christophe  was  eft 
alone  in  the  room  with  the  mother,  and  was  silent  and  much 
moved.  The  old  woman,  who  was  rather  talkative,  could  not 
bear  a prolonged  silence;  and  she  began  to  tell  him  the  whole 
history  of  her  acquaintance  with  Gottfried.  It  went  far  ac  . 
When  she  was  quite  young  Gottfried  loved  her.  He  dare 
not  tell  her,  but  it  became  a joke;  she  made  fun  of  him, 
everybody  made  fun  of  him,- (it  was  the  custom  wherever  he 
went)-Gottfried  usM  to  come  faithfully  every  year.  It 
seemed  natural  to  him  that  people  should  make  fun  of  him, 
natural  that  she  should  have  married  and  b^n  happy  with 
another  man.  She  had  been  too  happy,  she  had  boasted  ton 
much  of  her  happiness;  then  unhappiness  came.  Her  husband 
died  suddenly.  Then  his  daughter,— a flne  strong  girl  ^“om 
everybody  admired,  who  was  to  be  married  to  the  son  ot  the 
richest  farmer  of  the  district,-lost  her  sight  as  the  result  of  an 
accident.  One  day  when  she  had  climbed  to  the  great  pear 
tree  behind  the  house  to  pick  the  fruit  the  ladder  slipped ; as 
she  fell  a broken  branch  struck  a blow  near  the  eye.  At  hrst 
it  was  thought  that  she  would  escape  with  a scar,  but  later  she 
had  had  unceasing  pains  in  her  forehead;  one  eye  lost  its  sight, 
then  the  other;  and  all  their  remedies  had  been  useless.  Of 
course  the  marriage  was  broken  off;  her  betrothed  had  van- 


556 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


ished  without  any  explanation^  and  of  all  the  young  men 
who  a month  before  had  actually  fought  for  a dance  with  her, 
not  one  had  the  courage — (it  is  quite  comprehensible) — ^to 
take  a blind  girl  to  his  arms.  And  so  Modesta,  who  till  then 
had  been  careless  and  gay,  had  fallen  into  such  despair  that  she 
wanted  to  die.  She  refused  to  eat;  she  did  nothing  but  weep  \ 
from  morning  to  evening,  and  during  the  night  they  used  to  hear 
her  still  moaning  in  her  bed.  They  did  not  know  what  to  do, 
they  could  only  join  her  in  her  despair;  and  she  only  wept  the 
more.  At  last  they  lost  patience  with  her  moaning;  then  they 
scolded  her  and  she  talked  of  throwing  herself  into  the  canal. 
The  minister  would  come  sometimes;  he  would  talk  of  the 
good  God,  and  eternal  things,  and  the  merit  she  was  gaining 
for  the  next  world  by  bearing  her  sorrows,  but  that  did  not 
console  her  at  all.  One  day  Gottfried  came.  Modesta  had 
never  been  very  kind  to  him.  Not  that  she  was  naturally  un- 
kind, but  she  was  disdainful,  and  besides  she  never  thought ; she 
loved  to  laugh,  and  there  was  no  malice  in  what  she  said  or  did 
to  him.  When  he  heard  of  her  misfortune  he  was  as  over- 
whelmed by  it  as  though  he  were  a member  of  the  family. 
However  he  did  not  let  her  see  it  the  first  time  he  saw  her.  He 
went  and  sat  by  her  side,  made  no  allusion  to  her  accident  and 
began  to  talk  quietly  as  he  had  always  done  before.  He  had  no 
word  of  pity  for  her ; he  even  seemed  not  to  notice  that  she  was 
blind.  Only  he  never  talked  to  her  of  things  she  could  not  see ; 
he  talked  to  her  about  what  she  could  hear  or  notice  in  her  * 

blindness;  and  he  did  it  quite  simply  as  though  it  were  a nat-  | 

ural  thing;  it  was  as  though  he  too  were  blind.  At  first  she  ^ 

did  not  listen  and  went  on  weeping.  But  next  day  she  listened  ■ 

better  and  even  talked  to  him  a little.  ...  i 

^^And,^^  the  woman  went  on,  do  not  know  what  he  can 
have  said  to  her.  For  we  were  hay-making  and  I was  too  busy 
to  notice  her.  But  in  the  evening  when  we  came  in  from  the 
fields  we  found  her  talking  quietly.  And  after  that  she  went 
on  getting  better.  She  seemed  to  forget  her  affliction.  But 
every  now  and  then  she  would  think  of  it  again;  she  would 
weep  alone  or  try  to  talk  to  Gottfried  of  sad  things;  but  he 
seemed  not  to  hear,  or  he  would  not  reply  in  the  same  tone ; he 
would  go  on  talking  gravely  or  merrily  of  things  which  soothed 


EEVOLT  55^ 

and  interested  her.  At  last  he  persuaded  her  to  go  out  of  the 
house,  which  she  had  never  left  since  her  accident.  He  made 
her  go  a few  yards  round  the  garden  at  first,  and  then  for  a 
longer  distance  in  the  fields.  And  at  last  she  learned  to  find 
her  way  everywhere  and  to  make  out  everything  as  though  she 
could  see.  She  even  notices  things  to  which  we  never  pay  any 
attention,  and  she  is  interested  in  everything,  whereas  before 
she  was  never  interested  in  much  outside  herself.  That  time 
Gottfried  stayed  with  us  longer  than  usual.  We  dared  not  ask 
him  to  postpone  his  departure,  but  he  stayed  of  his  own  accord 
until  he  saw  that  she  was  calmer.  And  one  day— she  was  out 
there  in  the  yard,— I heard  her  laughing.  I cannot  tell  you 
what  an  effect  that  had  on  me.  Gottfried  looked  happy  too. 
He  was  sitting  near  me.  We  looked  at  each  other^  and  I am 
not  ashamed  to  tell  you,  sir,  that  I kissed  him  with  all  my 
heart.  Then  he  said  to  me : ^ 

« ‘ Now  I think  I can  go.  I am  not  needed  any  more. 

“ I tried  to  keep  him.  But  he  said : ^ 

“ ‘ No.  I must  go  now.  I cannot  stay  any  longer. 

“ Everybody  knew  that  he  was  like  the  Wandering  Jew : he 
could  not  stay  anywhere ; we  did  not  insist.  Then  he  went,  but 
he  arranged  to  come  here  more  often,  and  every  time  it  was  a 
great  joy  for  Modesta;  she  was  always  better  after  his  vipts. 
She  began  to  work  in  the  house  again ; her  brother  married ; 
she  looks  after  the  children ; and  now  she  never  complains  and 
always  looks  happy.  I sometimes  wonder  if  she  would  be  so 
happy  if  she  had  her  two  eyes.  Yes,  indeed,  sir,  there  are  days 
when  I think  that  it  would  be  better  to  be  like  her  and  not  to 
see  certain  ugly  people  and  certain  evil  things.  The  world  is 
growino'  very  ugly,  it  grows  worse  every  day.  ...  n 
yet  I should  be  very  much  afraid  of  God  taking  me  at  my 
word,  and  for  my  part  I would  rather  go  on  seeing  the  world. 

Ugly  as  it  is.  . . i j ni,  • 

Modesta  came  back  and  the  conversation  changed. 
tophe  wished  to  go  now  that  the  weather  was  fair  again,  but  they 
would  not  let  him.  He  had  to  agree  to  stay  to  supper  and  to 
spend  the  night  with  them.  Modesta  sat  near  Christophe  and 
did  not  leave  him  all  the  evening.  He  would  have  liked  to  talk 
intimately  to  the  girl  whose  lot  filled  him  with  pity.  But  she 


S58 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


.gave  him  no  opportunity.  She  would  only  try  to  ask  him  about 
Gottfried.  When  Christophe  told  her  certain  things  she  did 
not  know,  she  was  happy  and  a little  jealous.  She  was  a little 
unwilling  to  talk  of  Gottfried  herself ; it  was  apparent 
that  she  did  not  tell  everything,  and  when  she  did  tell  every- 
thing she  was  sorry  for  it  at  once;  her  memories  were  her 
property,  she  did  not  like  sharing  them  with  another;  in  her 
affection  she  was  as  eager  as  a peasant  woman  in  her  attach- 
ment to  her  land ; it  hurt  her  to  think  that  anybody 
could  love  Gottfried  as  much  as  she.  It  is  true  that  she  refused 
to  believe  it;  and  Christophe,  understanding,  left  her  that  sat- 
isfaction. As  he  listened  to  her  he  saw  that,  although  she  had 
seen  Gottfried  and  had  even  seen  him  with  indulgent  eyes, 
«ince  her  blindness  she  had  made  of  him  an  image  absolutely 
-different  from  the  reality,  and  she  had  transferred  to  the  phan- 
tom of  her  mind  all  the  hunger  for  love  that  was  in  her.  Noth- 
ing had  disturbed  her  illusion.  With  the  bold  certainty  of  the 
blind,  who  calmly  invent  what  they  do  not  know,  she  said  to 
Christophe : 

^^You  are  like  him.^^ 

He  understood  that  for  years  she  had  grown  used  to  living 
in  a house  with  closed  shutters  through  which  the  truth  could 
not  enter.  And  now  that  she  had  learned  to  see  in  the  darkness 
that  surrounded  her,  and  even  to  forget  the  darkness, 
perhaps  she  would  have  been  afraid  of  a ray  of  light  filtering 
through  the  gloom.  With  Christophe  she  recalled  a number  of 
rather  silly  trivialities  in  a smiling  and  disjointed  conversation 
in  which  Christophe  could  not  be  at  his  ease.  He  was  irritated 
by  her  chatter ; he  could  not  understand  how  a creature  who  had 
suffered  so  much  had  not  become  more  serious  in  her  suffering, 
and  he  could  not  find  tolerance  for  such  futility;  every  now  and 
then  he  tried  to  talk  of  graver  things,  but  they  found  no  echo ; 
Modesta  could  not — or  would  not — follow  him. 

They  went  to  bed.  It  was  long  before  Christophe  could 
sleep.  He  was  thinking  of  Gottfried  and  trying  to  disengage 
him  from  the  image  of  Modesta^s  childish  memories.  He  found 
it  difficult  and  was  irritated.  His  heart  ached  at  the  thought 
that  Gottfried  had  died  there  and  that  his  body  had  no  doubt 


KEVOLT 


559 


lain  in  that  very  bed.  He  tried  to  live  through  the  agony  of  his 
last  moments,  when  he  could  neither  speak  nor  make  the  blind 
girl  understand,  and  had  closed  his  eyes  in  death.  He  longed 
to  have  been  able  to  raise  his  eyelids  and  to  read  the  thoughts 
hidden  under  them,  the  mystery  of  that  soul,  which  had  gone 
without  making  itself  known,  perhaps  even  without  knowing 
itself ! It  never  tried  to  know  itself,  and  all  its  wisdom  lay  in 
not  desiring  wisdom,  or  in  not  trying  to  impose  its  will  on  cir- 
cumstance, but  in  abandoning  itself  to  the  force  of  circumstance, 
in  accepting  it  and  loving  it.  So  he  assimilated  the  mysterious 
essence  of  the  world  without  even  thinking  of  it.  And  if  he 
had  done  so  much  good  to  the  blind  girl,  to  Christophe,  and 
doubtless  to  many  others  who  would  be  forever  unknown,  it  was 
because,  instead  of  bringing  the  customary  words  of  the  revolt 
of  man  against  nature,  he  brought  something  of  the  indifferent 
peace  of  Nature,  and  reconciled  the  submissive  soul  with  her. 
He  did  good  like  the  fields,  the  woods,  all  Nature  with  which  he 
was  impregnated.  Christophe  remembered  the  evenings  he  had 
spent  with  Gottfried  in  the  country,  his  walks  as  a child,  the 
stories  and  songs  in  the  night.  He  remembered  also  the  last 
walk  he  had  taken  with  his  uncle,  on  the  hill  above  the  town, 
on  a cold  winter’s  morning,  and  the  tears  came  to  his  eyes 
once  more.  He  did  not  try  to  sleep,  so  as  to  remain  with_  his 
memories.  He  did  not  wish  to  lose  one  moment  of  that  night 
in  the  little  place,  filled  with  the  soul  of  Gottfried,  to  which  he 
had  been  led  as  though  impelled  by  some  unknown  force.  But 
while  he  lay  listening  to  the  irregular  trickling  of  the  foun- 
tain and  the  shrill  cries  of  the  bats,  the  healthy  fatigue  of 
youth  mastered  his  will,  and  he  fell  asleep. 

When  he  awoke  the  sun  was  shining:  everybody  on  the  farm 
was  already  at  work.  In  the  hall  he  found  only  the  old  woman 
and  the  children.  The  young  couple  were  in  the  fields,  and 
Modesta  had  gone  to  milk.  They  looked  for  her  in  vain.  She 
was  nowhere  to  be  found.  Christophe  said  he  would  not  wait 
for  her  return.  He  did  not  -much  want  to  see  her,  and  he 
said  that  he  was  in  a hurry.  He  set  out  after  telling  the  old 
woman  to  bid  the  others  good-bye  for  him. 

As  he  was  leaving  the  village  at  a turn  of  the  road  he  saw 


560 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


the  blind  girl  sitting  on  a bank  under  a hawthorn  hedge.  She 
got  up  as  she  heard  him  coming,  approached  him  smiling,  took 
his  hand,  and  said: 

Come.^’ 

They  climbed  up  through  meadows  to  a little  shady  flowering 
field  filled  with  tombstones,  which  looked  down  on  the  village. 
She  leji  him  to  a grave  and  said: 

^^He  is  there.’^ 

They  both  knelt  down.  Christophe  remembered  another 
grave  by  which  he  had  knelt  with  Gottfried,  and  he  thought : 

Soon  it  will  be  my  turn.^^ 

But  there  was  no  sadness  in  his  thought.  A great  peace 
was  ascending  from  the  earth.  Christophe  leaned  over  the 
grave  and  said  in  a whisper  to  Gottfried : 

Enter  into  me  I 

Modesta  was  praying,  with  her  hands  clasped  and  her  lips 
moving  in  silence.  Then  she  went  round  the  grave  on  her 
knees,  feeling  the  ground  and  the  grass  and  the  flowers  with 
her  hands.  She  seemed  to  caress  them,  her  quick  fingers 
seemed  to  see.  They  gently  plucked  the  dead  stalks  of  the  ivy 
and  the  faded  violets.  She  laid  her  hand  on  the  curb  to  get 
up.  Christophe  saw  her  fingers  pass  furtively  over  Gofctfried^s 
name,  lightly  touching  each  letter.  She  said: 

The  earth  is  sweet  this  morning.^^ 

She  held  out  her  hand  to  him.  He  gave  her  his.  She  made 
him  touch  the  moist  warm  earth.  He  did  not  loose  her  hand. 
Their  locked  fingers  plunged  into  the  earth.  He  kissed  Modesta. 
She  kissed  him,  too. 

They  both  rose  to  their  feet.  She  held  out  to  him  a few 
fresh  violets  she  had  gathered,  and  put  the  faded  ones  into 
her  bosom.  They  dusted  their  knees  and  left  the  cemetery 
without  a word.  In  the  fields  the  larks  were  singing.  \^ite 
butterflies  danced  about  their  heads.  They  sat  down  in  a 
meadow  a few  yards  away  from  each  other.  The  smoke  of 
the  village  was  ascending  direct  to  the  sky  that  was  washed 
by  the  rain.  The  still  canal  glimmered  between  the  poplars. 
A gleaming  blue  mist  wrapped  the  meadows  and  woods  in  its 
folds. 


EEVOLT 


561 


Modesta  broke  the  silence.  She  spoke  in  a whisper  of  the 
beauty  of  the  day  as  though  she  could  see  it.  She  drank  in  the 
air  through  her  half-open  lips;  she  listened  for  the  sounds  of 
creatures  and  things.  Christophe  also  knew  the  worth  of  such 
music.  He  said  what  she  was  thinking  and  could  not  have 
said.  He  named  certain  of  the  cries  and  imperceptible  tremors 
that  they  could  hear  in  the  grass,  in  the  depths  of  the  air.  She 
said: 

^^Ah!  You  see  that^  too?’^ 

He  replied  that  Gottfried  had  taught  him  to  distinguish 
them. 

"'You,  too?''  she  said  a little  crossly. 

He  wanted  to  say  to  her : 

" Do  not  be  jealous." 

But  he  saw  the  divine  light  smiling  all  about  them : he 
looked  at  her  blind  eyes  and  was  filled  with  pity. 

" So,"  he  asked,  " it  was  Gottfried  taught  you?  " 

She  said  ""  Yes,"  and  that  they  gave  her  more  delight  than 
ever  before.  . . . She  did  not  say  before  what.  She 

never  mentioned  the  words  eyes  " or  blind." 

They  were  silent  for  a moment.  Christophe  looked  at  her 
in  pity.  She  felt  that  he  was  looking  at  her.  He  would  have 
liked  to  tell  her  how  much  he  pitied  her.  He  would  have  liked- 
her  to  complain,  to  confide  in  him.  He  asked  kindly: 

"You  have  been  very  unhappy?" 

She  sat  dumb  and  unyielding.  She  plucked  the  blades  of 
grass  and  munched  them  in  silence.  After  a few  moments, 
(the  song  of  a lark  was  going  farther  and  farther  from  them 
in  the  sky), — Christophe  told  her  how  he  too  had  been  unhappy, 
and  how  Gottfried  had  helped  him.  He  told  her  all  his  sor- 
rows, his  trials,  as  though  he  were  thinking  aloud  or  talking 
to  a sister.  The  blind  girl's  face  lit  up  as  he  told  his  story, 
which  she  followed  eagerly.  Christophe  watched  her  and  saw 
that  she  was  on  the  point  of  speaking.  She  made  a movement 
to  come  near  him  and  hold  his  hand.  He  moved,  too  but  al- 
ready she  had  relapsed  into  her  impassiveness,  and  when  he 
had  finished,  she  only  replied  with  a few  banal  words.  Be- 
i hind  her  broad  forehead,  on  which  there  was  not  a line,  there 


662 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


was  the  obstinacy  of  a peasant,  hard  as  a stone.  She  said  that 
she  must  go  home  to  look  after  her  brothers  children.  She 
talked  of  them  with  a calm  smile. 

He  asked  her: 

You  are  happy  ? 

She  seemed  to  be  more  happy  to  hear  him  say  the  word.  She 
said  she  was  happy  and  insisted  on  the  reasons  she  had  for 
being  so:  she  was  trying  to  persuade  herself  and  him  that  it 
was  so.  She  spoke  of  the  children,  and  the  house,  and  all  that 
she  had  to  do.  . . . 

Oh ! yes,^^  she  said,  I am  very  happy ! Christophe  did 
not  reply.  She  rose  to  go.  He  rose  too.  They  said  good-bye 
gaily  and  carelessly.  Modesta’s  hand  trembled  a little  in  Chris- 
tophers. She  said : 

You  will  have  fine  weather  for  your  walk  to-day. And  she 
told  him  of  a crossroads  where  he  must  not  go  wrong.  It  was 
as  though,  of  the  two,  Christophe  were  the  blind  one. 

They  parted.  He  went  down  the  hill.  When  he  reached  the  , 
bottom  he  turned.  She  was  standing  at  the  summit  in  the  i 
same  place.  She  waved  her  handkerchief  and  made  signs  to 
him  as  though  she  saw  him.  ! 

There  was  something  heroic  and  absurd  in  her  obstinacy  in 
denying  her  misfortune,  something  which  touched  Christophe 
and  hurt  him.  He  felt  how  worthy  Modesta  was  of  pity  and 
even  of  admiration, — and  he  could  not  have  lived  two  days  with 
her.  As  he  went  his  way  between  fiowering  hedges  he  thought  ^ 
of  dear  old  Schulz,  and  his  old  eyes,  bright  and  tender,  before  ' 
which  so  many  sorrows  had  passed  which  they  refused  to  see,  * 
for  they  would  not  see  hurtful  realities.  - 

How  does  he  see  me,  I wonder  ? thought  Christophe.  I ; 
am  so  different  from  his  idea  of  me!  To  him  I am  what  he 
wants  me  to  be.  Everything  is  in  his  own  image,  pure  and 
noble  like  himself.  He  could  not  bear  life  if  he  saw  it  as  it  is.^^ 

And  he  thought  of  the  girl  living  in  darkness  who  denied 
the  darkness,  and  tried  to  pretend  that  what  was  was  not,  and 
that  what  was  not  was. 

Then  he  saw  the  greatness  of  German  idealism,  which  he  had 
so  often  loathed  because  in  vulgar  souls  it  is  a source  of  hypoc- 
risy and  stupidity.  He  saw  the  beauty  of  the  faith  which 


EEVOLT 


563 


begets  a world  within  the  world,  different  from  the  world,  like 
a little  island  in  the  ocean. — But  he  could  not  bear  such  a 
faith  for  himself,  and  refused  to  take  refuge  upon  such  an 
Island  of  the  Dead.  Life ! Truth ! He  would  not  be  a lying 
hero.  Perhaps  that  optimistic  lie  which  a German  Emperor 
tried  to  make  law  for  all  his  people  was  indeed  necessary  for 
weak  creatures  if  they  were  to  live.  And  Christophe  would 
have  thought  it  a crime  to  snatch  from  such  poor  wretches  the 
illusion  which  upheld  them.  But  for  himself  he  never  could 
have  recourse  to  such  subterfuges.  He  would  rather  die  than 
live  by  illusion.  Was  not  Art  also  an  illusion?  No.  It  must 
not  be.  Truth!  Truth!  Eyes  wide  open,  let  him  draw  in 
through  every  pore  the  all-puissant  breath  of  life,  see  things 
as  they  are,  squarely  face  his  misfortunes, — and  laugh. 

Several  months  passed.  Christophe  had  lost  all  hope  of  escap- 
ing from  the  town.  Hassler,  the  only  man  who  could  have 
saved  him,  had  refused  to  help  him.  And  old  Schulz’s  friend- 
ship had  been  taken  from  him  almost  as  soon  as  it  had  been 
given. 

He  had  written  once  on  his  return,  and  he  had  received 
two  affectionate  letters,  but  from  sheer  laziness,  and  especially 
because  of  the  difficulty  he  had  expressing  himself  in  a letter, 
he  delayed  thanking  him  for  his  kind  words.  He  put  off  writ- 
ing from  day  to  day.  And  when  at  last  he  made  up  his  mind 
to  write  he  had  a word  from  Kunz  announcing  the  death  of 
his  old  friend.  Schulz  had  had  a relapse  of  his  bronchitis 
which  had  developed  into  pneumonia.  He  had  forbidden  them 
to  bother  Christophe,  of  whom  he  was  always  talking.  In  spite 
of  his  extreme  weakness  and  many  years  of  illness,  he  was 
not  spared  a long  and  painful  end.  He  had  charged  Kunz 
to  convey  the  tidings  to  Christophe  and  to  tell  him  that  he 
had  thought  of  him  up  to  the  last  hour;  that  he  thanked  him 
for  all  the  happiness  he  owed  him,  and  that  his  blessing  would 
be  on  Christophe  as  long  as  he  lived.  Kunz  did  not  tell  him 
that  the  day  with  Christophe  had  probably  been  the  reason  of 
his  relapse  and  the  cause  of  his  death. 

Christophe  wept  in  silence,  and  he  felt  then  all  the  worth 
of  the  friend  he  had  lost,  and  how  much  he  loved  him,  and  he 


564 


JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 


was  grieved  not  to  have  told  him  more  of  how  he  loved  him.  It 
was  too  late  now.  And  what  was  left  to  him  ? The  good  Schulz 
had  only  appeared  enough  to  make  the  void  seem  more  empty, 
the  night  more  black  after  he  ceased  to  be.  As  for  Kunz  and 
Pottpetschmidt,  they  had  no  value  outside  the  friendship  they 
had  for  Schulz  and  Schulz  for  them.  Christophe  valued  them 
at  their  proper  worth.  He  wrote  to  them  once  and  their  rela- 
tion ended  there.  He  tried  also  to  write  to  Modesta,  but  she 
answered  with  a commonplace  letter  in  which  she  spoke  only 
of  trivialities.  He  gave  up  the  correspondence.  He  wrote  to 
nobody  and  nobody  wrote  to  him. 

Silence.  Silence.  From  day  to  day  the  heavy  cloak  of 
silence  descended  upon  Christophe.  It  was  like  a rain  of  ashes 
falling  on  him.  It  seemed  already  to  be  evening,  and  Chris- 
tophe was  losing  his  hold  on  life.  He  would  not  resign  him- 
self to  that.  The  hour  of  sleep  was  not  yet  come.  He  must 
live. 

And  he  could  not  live  in  Germany.  The  sufferings  of  his; 
genius  cramped  by  the  narrowness  of  the  little  town  lashed  him 
into  injustice.  His  nerves  were  raw:  everything  drew  blood.- 
He  was  like  one  of  .those  wretched  wild  animals  who  perished’ 
of  boredom  in  the  holes  and  cages  in  which  they  were  impris- 
oned in  the  Stadtgarten  (town  gardens) . Christophe  used  often- 
to  go  and  look  at  them  in  sympathy.  He  used  to  look  at  their 
wonderful  eyes,  in  which  there  burned— or  every  day  grew 
fainter — a fierce  and  desperate  fire.  Ah!  How  they  would, 
have  loved  the  brutal  bullet  which  sets  free,  or  the  knife  that; 
strikes  into  their  bleeding  hearts!  Anything  rather  than  the 
savage  indifference  of  those  men  who  prevented  them  front 
either  living  or  dying ! 

Hot  the  hostility  of  the  people  was  the  hardest  for  Christophe 
to  bear,  but  their  inconsistency,  their  formless,  shallow-  natures. 
There  was  no"  knowing  how  to  take  them.  The  pig-headed 
opposition  of  one  of  those  stiff-necked,  hard  races  who  refuse 
to  understand  any  new  thought  were  much  better.  Against 
force  it  is  possible  to  oppose  force — the  pick  and  the  mine 
which  hew  away  and  blow  up  the  hard  rock.  But  what 
can  be  done  against  an  amorphous  mass  which  gives  like  a 
jelly,  collapses  under  the  least  pressure,  and  retains  no  imprint 


KEVOLT 


565 


of  it  ? All  thought  and  energy  and  everything  disappeared  in 
the  slough.  When  a stone  fell  there  were  hardly  more  than  a 
few  ripples  quivering  on  the  surface  of  the  gulf:  the  monster 
opened  and  shut  its  maw,  and  there  was  left  no  trace  of  what 
had  been. 

They  were  not  enemies.  Dear  God ! if  they  only  had  been 
enemies!  They  were  people  who  had  not  the  strength  to  love 
I or  hate,  or  believe  or  disbelieve, — in  religion,  in  art,  in  politics, 

I in  daily  life ; and  all  their  energies  were  expended  in  trying  to 
reconcile  the  irreconcilable.  Especially  since  the  German  vie- 
I tories  they  had  been  striving  to  make  a compromise,  a revolting 
intrigue  between  their  new  power  and  their  old  principles.  The 
old  idealism  had  not  been  renounced.  There  should  have  been 
|a  new  effort  of  freedom  of  which  they  were  incapable.  They 
were  content  with  a forgery,  with  making  it  subservient  to 
German  interests.  Like  the  serene  and  subtle  Schwabian,  Hegel, 
who  had  waited  until  after  Leipzig  and  Waterloo  to  assimilate 
the  cause  of  his  philosophy  with  the  Prussian  State — their  in- 
terests having  changed,  their  principles  had  changed  too.  When 
they  were  defeated  they  said  that  Germany’s  ideal  was  human- 
ity. Now  that  they  had  defeated  others,  they  said  that  Ger- 
many was  the  ideal  of  humanity.  When  other  countries  were 
more  powerful,  they  said,  with  Lessing,  that  patriotism  is  a 
heroic  weakness  which  it  is  well  to  he  without/*  and  they  called 
themselves  citizens  of  the  world/*  Now  that  they  were  in  the 
ascendant,  they  could  not  enough  despise  the  Utopias  a la 
Frangaise/*  Universal  peace,  fraternity,  pacific  progress,  the 
rights  of  man,  natural  equality : they  said  that  the  strongest 
people  had  absolute  rights  against  the  others,  and  that  the 
others,  being  weaker,  had  no  rights  against  themselves.  It  was 
the  living  God  and  the  Incarnate  Idea,  the  progress  of  which  is 
accomplished  by  war,  violence,  and  oppression.  Force  had  be- 
come holy  now  that  it  was  on  their  side.  Foj’ce  had  become 
the  only  idealism  and  the  only  intelligence. 

In  truth,  Germany  had  suffered  so  much  for  centuries  from 
having  idealism  and  no  fame  that  she  had  every  excuse  after 
50  many  trials  for  making  the  sorrowful  confession  that  at  all 
posts  Force  must  be  hers.  But  what  bitterness  was  hidden  in 
)uch  a confession  from  the  people  of  Herder  and  Goethe ! And 


566 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


what  an  abdication  was  the  German  victory,  what  a degradation 
of  the  German  ideal ! Alas ! There  were  only  too  many  facili- 
ties for  such  an  abdication  in  the  deplorable  tendency  even  of 
the  best  Germans  to  submit. 

The  chief  characteristic  of  Germany/'  said  Moser,  more  than 
a century  ago,  is  obedience,"  And  Madame  de  Stael: 

They  have  submitted  doughtily.  They  find  philosophic 
reasons  for  explaining  the  least  philosophic  theory  in  the  world: 
respect  for  power  and  the  chastening  emotion  of  fear  which 
changes  that  respect  into  admiration," 

Christophe  found  that  feeling  everywhere  in  Germany,  from 
the  highest  to  the  lowest — from  the  William  Tell  of  Schiller, 
that  limited  little  bourgeois  with  muscles  like  a porter,  who,  as 
the  free  Jew  Borne  says,  to  reconcile  honor  and  fear  passes 
before  the  pillar  of  dear  Herr  Gessler,  with  his  eyes  down  so 
as  to  be  able  to  say  that  he  did  not  see  the  hat;  did  not  dis^, 
obey" — ^to  the  aged  and  respectable  Professor  Weisse,  a man 
of  seventy,  and  one  of  the  most  honored  men  of  learning  in  the 
town,  who,  when  he  saw  a Herr  Lieutenant  coming,  would  make 
haste  to  give  him  the  path  and  would  step  down  into  the  road. 
Christophers  blood  boiled  whenever  he  saw  one  of  these  small, 
acts  of  daily  servility.  They  hurt  him  as  much  as  though  he: 
had  demeaned  himself.  The  arrogant  manners  of  the  officers 
whom  he  met  in  the  street,  their  haughty  insolence,  made  him 
speechless  with  anger.  He  never  would  make  way  for  them.” 
Whenever  he  passed  them  he  returned  theij  arrogant  stare.: 
More  than  once  he  was  very  near  causing  a scene.  He  seemed| 
to  be  looking  for  trouble.  However,  he  was  the  first  to  under-;* 
stand  the  futility  of  such  bravado;  but  he  had  moments  of 
aberration,  the  perpetual  constraint  which  he  imposed  on  him- 
self and  the  accumulation  of  force  in  him  that  had  no  outlet 
made  him  furious.  Then  he  was  ready  to  go  any  length,  and 
he  had  a feeling  that  if  he  stayed  a year  longer  in  the  place 
he  would  be  lost.  He  loathed  the  brutal  militarism  which  he 
felt  weighing  down  upon  him,  the  sabers  clanking  on  the  pave- 
ment, the  piles  of  arms,  and  the  guns  placed  outside  the  bar- 
racks, their  muzzles  gaping  down  on  the  town,  ready  to  fire. 
Scandalous  novels,  which  were  then  making  a great  stir,  de- 
nounced the  corruption  of  the  garrisons,  great  and  small:  the 


‘fJEVOLT 


567 


officers  were  represented  as  mischievous  creatures,  who,  outside 
their  automatic  duties,  were  only  idle  and  spent  their  time  in 
drinking,  gambling,  getting  into  debt,  living  on  their  families, 
slandering  one  another,  and  from  top  to  bottom  of  the  hier- 
archy they  abused  their  authority  at  the  expense  of  their  in- 
feriors. The  idea  that  he  would  one  day  have  to  obey  them 
stuck  in  Christophe’s  throat.  He  could  not,  no,  he  could  never 
bear  it,  and  lose  his  own  self-respect  by  submitting  to  their 
humiliations  and  injustice.  ...  He  had  no  idea  of  the  moral 
strength  in  some  of  them,  or  of  all  that  they  might  be  suf- 
fering themselves:  lost  illusions,  so  much  strength  and  youth 
and  honor  and  faith,  and  passionate  desire  for  sacrifice,  turned 
to  ill  account  and  spoiled, — the  pointlessness  of  a career,  which, 
if  it  is  only  a career,  if  it  has  not  sacrifice  as  its  end,  is  only  a 
grim  activity,  an  inept  display,  a ritual  which  is  recited  with- 
out belief  in  the  words  that  are  said.  ... 

His  country  was  not  enough  for  Christophe.  He  felt  in 
himself  that  unknown  force  which  wakes  suddenly,  irresistibljs 
in  certain  species  of  birds,  at  definite  times,  like  the  ebb  and 
flow  of  the  tides:— the  instinct  of  the  great  migrations.  As 
he  read  the  volumes  of  Herder  and  Fichte  which  old  Schulz 
had  left  him,  he  found  souls  like  his  own,  not  "sons  of  the 
soil"  slavishly  bound  to  the  globe,  but  "spirits,  sons  of  the 
sun,"  turning  invincibly  to  the  light  wheresoever  it  comes. 

Whither  should  he  go?  He  did  not  know.  But  instinctively 
his  eyes  turned  to  the  Latin  South.  And  first  to  France 
France,  the  eternal  refuge  of  Germany  in  distress.  How  often 
had  German  thought  turned  to  France,  without  ceasing  to 
slander  her ! Even  since  seventy,  what  an  attraction  emanated 
from  the  town  which  had  been  shattered  and  smoking  under 
the  German  guns!  The  most  revolutionary  and  the  most  re- 
actionary forms  of  thought  and  art  had  found  alternately  and 
sometimes  at  once  example  and  inspiration  there.  Like  so  many 
other  great  German  musicians  in  distress,  Christophe  turned 
towards  Paris.  . . . What  did  he  know  of  the  French?  Two 
women’s  faces  and  some  chance  reading.  That  was  enough  for 
him  to  imagine  a country  of  light,  of  gaiety,  of  courage,  and 
even  of  a little  Gallic  boasting,  which  does  not  sort  ill  with  the 
bold  youth  of  the  heart.  He  believed  it  all,  because  he  needed 


568 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


to  believe  it  all,  because,  with  all  his  soul,  he  would  have  liked  1 
it  to  be  so. 

He  made  up  his  mind  to  go.  But  he  could  not  go  because 
of  his  mother. 

Louisa  was  growing  old.  She  adored  her  son,  who  was  her 
only  joy,  and  she  was  all  that  he  most  loved  on  earth.  And 
yet  they  were  always  hurting  each  other.  She  hardly  under- 
stood Christophe,  and  did  not  try  to  understand  him.  She  was 
only  concerned  to  love  him.  She  had  a narrow,  timid,  dull 
mind,  and  a fine  heart;  an  immense  need  of  loving  and  being 
loved  in  which  there  was  something  touching  and  sad.  She 
respected  her  son  because  he  seemed  to  her  to  be  very  learned ; 
but  she  did  all  she  could  to  stifie  his  genius.  She  thought  he 
would  stay  all  his  life  with  her  in  their  little  town.  They  had 
lived  together  for  years,  and  she  could  not  imagine  that  he  . 
would  not  always  be  the  same.  She  was  happy : why  should  he  \ 
not  be  happy,  too?  All  her  dreams  for  him  soared  no  higher  I 
than  seeing  him  married  to  some  prosperous  citizen  of  the  i 
town,  hearing  him  play  the  organ  at  church  on  Sundays,  and  ' 
never  having  him  leave  her.  She  regarded  her  son  as  though  he  ; 
were  still  twelve  years  old.  She  would  have  liked  him  never  to 
be  more  than  that.  Innocently  she  inflicted  torture  on  the  un- 
happy man  who  was  suffocated  in  that  narrow  world. 

And  yet  there  was  much  truth — moral  greatness — in  that  un- 
conscious philosophy  of  the  mother,  who  could  not  understand 
ambition  and  saw  all  the  happiness  of  life  in  the  family  affec-  : 
tions  and  the  accomplishment  of  humble  duties.  She  was  a \ 
creature  who  wished  to  love  and  only  to  love.  Sooner  renounce  ; 
life,  reason,  logic,  the  material  world,  everything,  rather  than  ' 
love ! And  that  love  was  infinite,  suppliant,  exacting : it  gave 
everything — it  wished  to  be  given  everything;  it  renounced  life 
for  love,  and  it  desired  that  renunciation  from  others,  from 
the  beloved.  What  a power  is  the  love  of  a simple  soul!  It 
makes  it  find  at  once  what  the  groping  reasoning  of  an  uncertain 
genius  like  Tolstoy,  or  the  too  refined  art  of  a dying  civilization, 
discovers  after  a lifetime — ages — of  bitter  struggle  and  exhaust- 
ing effort!  But  the  imperious  world  which  was  seething  in 


EEVOLT 


569 


Christophe  had  very  different  laws  and  demanded  another 
wisdom. 

For  a long  time  he  had  been  wanting  to  announce  his  deter- 
mination to  his  mother.  But  he  was  fearful  of  the  grief  it 
would  bring  to  her,  and  just  as  he  was  about  to  speak  he  would 
lose  his  courage  and  put  it  off.  Two  or  three  times  he  did 
timidly  allude  to  his  departure,  but  Louisa  did  not  take  him 
seriously: — perhaps  she  preferred  not  to  take  him  seriously,  so 
as  to  persuade  him  that  he  was  talking  in  jest.  Then  he  dared 
not  go  on;  but  he  would  remain  gloomy  and  thoughtful,  or  it 
was  apparent  that  he  had  some  secret  burden  upon  his  soul. 
And  the  poor  woman,  who  had  an  intuition  as  to  the  nature  of 
that  secret,  tried  fearfully  to  delay  the  confession  of  it.  Some- 
times in  the  evening,  when  they  were  sitting,  silent,  in  the  light 
of  the  lamp,  she  would  suddenly  feel  that  he  was  going  to 
speak,  and  then  in  terror  she  would  begin  to  talk,  very  quickly, 
at  random,  about  nothing  in  particular.  She  hardly  knew  what 
she  was  saying,  but  at  all  costs  she  must  keep  him  from  speak- 
ing. Generally  her  instinct  made  her  find  the  best  means  of 
imposing  silence  on  him : she  would  complain  about  her  health, 
about  the  swelling  of  her  hands  and  feet,  and  the  cramps  in 
her  legs.  She  would  exaggerate  her  sickness:  call  herself  an 
old,  useless,  bed-ridden  woman.  He  was  not  deceived  by  her 
simple  tricks.  He  would  look  at  her  sadly  in  dumb  reproach, 
and  after  a moment  he  would  get  up,  saying  that  he  was  tired, 
and  go  to  bed. 

But  all  her  devices  could  not  save  Louisa  for  long.  One 
evening,  when  she  resorted  to  them  once  more,  Christophe 
gathered  his  courage  and  put  his  hand  on  his  mother’s  and 
said : 

“ No,  mother.  I have  something  to  say  to  you.”  Louisa 
was  horrified,  but  she  tried  to  smile  and  say  chokingly: 

“ What  is  it,  my  dear  ? ” 

Christophe  stammered  out  his  intention  of  going.  She  tried 
to  take  it  as  a joke  and  to  turn  the  conversation  as  usual,  but 
he  was  not  to  be  put  off,  and  went  on  so  deliberately  and  so 
seriously  that  there  was  no  possibility  of  doubt.  Then  she  said 
nothing.  Her  pulse  stopped,  and  she  sat  there  dumb,  frozen, 


570 


JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 


looking  at  him  with  terror  in  her  eyes.  Such  sorrow  showed  in  ] 
her  eyes  as  he  spoke  that  he  too  stopped,  and  they  sat,  both  j 
speechless.  When  at  last  she  was  able  to  recover  her  breath, 
she  said — (her  lips  trembled)  — : 

It  is  impossible  ...  It  is  impossible  . . 

Two  large  tears  trickled  down  her  cheeks.  He  turned  his 
head  away  in  despair  and  hid  his  face  in  his  hands.  They 
wept.  After  some  time  he  went  to  his  room  and  shut  himself 
up  until  the  morrow.  They  made  no  reference  to  what  had 
happened,  and  as  he  did  not  speak  of  it  again  she  tried  to 
pretend  that  he  had  abandoned  the  project.  But  she  lived  on 
tenterhooks. 

There  came  a time  when  he  could  hold  himself  in  no  longer. 

He  had  to  speak  even  if  it  broke  his  heart:  he  was  suffering 
too  much.  The  egoism  of  his  sorrow  mastered  the  idea  of  the 
suffering  he  would  bring  to  her.  He  spoke.  He  went  through 
with  it,  never  looking  at  his  mother,  for  fear  of  being  too  greatly 
moved.  He  fixed  the  day  for  his  departure  so  as  to  avoid  a 
second  discussion — (he  did  not  know  if  he  could  again  win 
the  sad  courage  that  was  in  him  that  day) . Louisa  cried : , 

No,  no ! Stop,  stop ! . . .^^  ? 

He  set  his  teeth  and  went  on  implacably.  When  he  had  ' 
finished  (she  was  sobbing)  he  took  her  hands  and  tried  to 
make  her  understand  how  it  was  absolutely  necessary  for  his 
art  and  his  life  for  him  to  go  away  for  some  time.  She  refused 
to  listen.  She  wept  and  said:  i 

No,  no ! . . . I will  not  . . | 

After  trying  to  reason  with  her,  in  vain,  he  left  her,  thinking  ! 
that  the  night  would  bring  about  a change  in  her  ideas.  But  ^ 
when  they  met  next  day  at  breakfast  he  began  once  more  to  i 
talk  of  his  plans.  She  dropped  the  piece  of  bread  she  was  rais- 
ing to  her  lips  and  said  sorrowfully  and  reproachfully: 

Why  do  you  want  to  torture  me  ? 

He  was  touched,  but  he  said : 

Dear  mother,  I must.^^ 

No,  no ! she  replied.  You  must  not  ...  You  want  to 
hurt  me  . . . It  is  a madness  . . 

They  tried  to  convince  each  other,  but  they  did  not  listen 
to  each  other.  He  saw  that  argument  was  wasted;  it  would 


EEVOLT 


571 


only  make  her  suffer  more,  and  he  began  ostentatiously  to  pre- 
pare for  his  departure. 

When  she  saw  that  no  entreaty  would  stop  him,  Louisa  re- 
lapsed into  a gloomy  stupor.  She  spent  her  days  locked  up  in 
her  room  and  without  a light,  when  evening  came.  She  did  not 
speak  or  eat.  At  night  he  could  hear  her  weeping.  He  was 
racked  by  it.  He  could  have  cried  out  in  his  grief,  as  he  lay 
all  night  twisting  and  turning  in  his  bed,  sleeplessly,  a prey  to 
his  remorse.  He  loved  her  so.  Why  must  he  make  her  suf- 
fer? ..  . Alas ! She  would  not  be  the  only  one : he  saw  that 
clearly.  . . . Why  had  destiny  given  him  the  desire  and  strength 
of  a mission  which  must  make  those  whom  he  loved  suffer  ? 

“ Ah ! ” he  thought.  “ If  I were  free,  if  I were  not  drawn  on 
by  the  cruel  need  of  being  what  I must  be,  or  else  of  dying  in 
shame  and  disgust  with  myself,  how  happy  would  I make  you— 
you  whom  I love ! Let  me  live  first  \ do,  fight,  suffer,  and  then 
I will  come  back  to  you  and  love  you  more  than  ever.  How  I 
would  like  only  to  love,  love,  love!  . . .” 

He  never  could  have  been  strong  enough  to  resist  the  per- 
petual reproach  of  the  grief-stricken  soul  had  that  reproach 
been  strong  enough  to  remain  silent.  But  Louisa,  who  was 
weak  and  rather  talkative,  could  not  keep  the  sorrow  that  was 
stifling  her  to  herself.  She  told  her  neighbors.  She  told  her 
two  other  sons.  They  could  not  miss  such  a fine  opportunity  of 
putting  Christophe  in  the  wrong.  Eodolphe  especially,  who 
had  never  ceased  to  be  jealous  of  his  elder  brother,  although 
there  was  little  enough  reason  for  it  at  the  time — Eodolphe, 
who  was  cut  to  the  quick  by  the  least  praise  of  Christophe,  and 
was  secretly  afraid  of  his  future  success,  though  he  never  dared 
admit  so  base  a thought— (for  he  was  clever  enough  to  feel  his 
brother’s  force,  and  to  be  afraid  that  others  would  feel  it,  too), 
Eodolphe  was  only  too  happy  to  crush  Christophe  beneath  the 
weight  of  his  superiority.  He  had  never  worried  much  about 
his  mother,  though  he  knew  her  straitened  circumstances : al- 
though he  was  well  able  to  afford  to  help  her,  he  left  it  all  to 
Christophe.  But  when  he  heard  of  Christophe’s  intention  he 
discovered  at  once  hidden  treasures  of  affection.  He  was 
furious  at  his  proposing  to  leave  his  mother  and  called  it  mon- 
strous egoism.  He  was  impudent  enough  to  tell  Christophe 


572 


JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 


so.  He  lectured  him  loftily  like  a child  who  deserves  smack- 
ing; he  told  him  stiffly  of  his  duty  towards  his  mother  and 
of  all  that  she  had  sacrificed  for  him.  Christophe  almost  burst 
with  rage.  He  kicked  Rodolphe  out  and  called  him  a rascal 
and  a hypocrite.  Rodolphe  avenged  himself  by  feeding  his 
mother’s  indignation.  Excited  hy  him,  Louisa  began  to  per- 
suade herself  that  Christophe  was  behaving  like  a bad  son.  She 
tried  to  declare  that  he  had  no  right  to  go,  and  she  was  only 
too  willing  to  believe  it.  Instead  of  using  only  her  tears,  which 
were  her  strongest  weapon,  she  reproached  Christophe  bitterly 
and  unjustly,  and  disgusted  him.  They  said  cruel  things  to 
each  other : the  result  was  that  Christophe,  who,  till  then,  had 
been  hesitating,  only  thought  of  hastening  his  preparations  for 
his  departure.  He  knew  that  the  charitable  neighbors  were 
commiserating  his  mother  and  that  in  the  opinion  of  the  neigh- 
borhood she  was  regarded  as  a victim  and  himself  as  a mon-  , 
ster.  He  set  his  teeth  and  would  not  go  back  on  his  resolve. 

The  days  passed.  Christophe  and  Louisa  hardly  spoke  to 
each  other.  Instead  of  enjoying  to  the  last  drop  their  last 
days  together,  these  two  who  loved  each  other  wasted  the  time 
that  was  left — as  too  often  happens— in  one  of  those  sterile  ' 
fits  of  sullenness  in  which  so  many  affections  are  swallowed  i 
up.  They  only  met  at  meals,  when  they  sat  opposite  each  other, 
not  looking  at  each  other,  never  speaking,  forcing  themselves 
to  eat  a few  mouthfuls,  not  so  much  for  the  sake  of  eating  as  ; 
for  the  sake  of  appearances.  Christophe  would  contrive  to  ^ 
mumble  a few  words,  but  Louisa  would  not  reply;  and  when  ^ 
she  tried  to  talk  he  would  be  silent.  This  state  of  things  was  i 
intolerable  to  both  of  them,  and  the  longer  it  went  on  the  : 
more  difficult  it  became  to  break  it.  Were  they  going  to  part  ! 
like  that?  Louisa  admitted  that  she  had  been  unjust  and 
awkward,  but  she  was  suffering  too  much  to  know  how  to  win 
back  her  son’s  love,  which  she  thought  she  had  lost,  and  at 
all  costs  to  prevent  his  departure,  the  idea  of  which  she  refused 
to  face.  Christophe  stole  glances  at  his  mother’s  pale,  swollen 
face  and  he  was  torn  by  remorse;  but  he  had  made  up  his  mind 
to  go,  and  knowing  that  he  was  going  forever  out  of  her  life, 
he  wished  cowardly  to  be  gone  to  escape  his  remorse. 

His  departure  was  fixed  for  the  next  day  but  one.  One  of 


EEVOLT 


573 


their  sad  meals  had  just  come  to  an  end.  When  they  finished 
their  supper,  during  which  they  had  not  spoken  a word,  Chris- 
tophe  withdrew  to  his  room;  and  sitting  at  his  desk,  with  his 
head  in  his  hands — he  was  incapable  of  working — he  became 
lost  in  thought.  The  night  was  drawing  late:  it  was  nearly 
one  o^clock  in  the  morning.  Suddenly  he  heard  a noise,  a chair 
upset  in  the  next  room.  The  door  opened  and  his  mother  ap* 
peared  in  her  nightgown,  barefooted,  and  threw  her  arms  round 
his  neck  and  sobbed.  She  was  feverish.  She  kissed  her  son 
and  moaned  through  her  despairing  sobs : 

Don’t  go ! Don’t  go ! I implore  you ! I implore  you ! 
My  dear,  don’t  go ! . . . I shall  die  ...  I can’t,  I can’t 
bear  it ! . . .” 

He  was  alarmed  and  upset.  He  kissed  her  and  said : Dear 
mother,  calm  yourself,  please,  please ! ” 

But  she  went  on : 

I can’t  bear  it  . . . I have  only  you.  If  you  go,  what  will 
become  of  me?  I shall  die  if  you  go.  I don’t  want  to  die 
a wav  from  you.  I don’t  want  to  die  alone.  Wait  until  I am 
dead!  . . .” 

Her  words  rent  his  heart.  He  did  not  know  what  to  say 
to  console  her.  What  arguments  could  hold  good  against  such 
an  outpouring  of  love  and  sorrow ! He  took  her  on  his  knees 
and  tried  to  calm  her  with  kisses  and  little  affectionate  words. 
The  old  woman  gradually  became  silent  and  wept  softly.  When 
she  was  a little  comforted,  he  said : 

Go  to  bed.  You  will  catch  cold.” 

She  repeated : Don’t  go ! ” 

He  said  in  a low  voice : I will  not  go.” 

She  trembled  and  took  his  hand.  Truly?”  she  said. 
Truly?” 

He  turned  his  head  away  sadly.  To-morrow,”  he  answered, 
I will  tell  you  to-morrow.  . . . Leave  me  now,  please ! . . .”^ 
She  got  up  meekly  and  went  back  to  her  room.  Next  morn- 
ing she  was  ashamed  of  her  despairing  outburst  which  had 
come  upon  her  like  a madness  in  the  middle  of  the  night,  and 
she  was  fearful  of  what  her  son  would  say  to  her.  She  waited 
, for  him,  sitting  in  a corner  of  the  room.  She  had  taken  up 
some  knitting  for  occupation,  but  her  hands  refused  to  hold  it. 


574 


JEAN-CHKISTOPHE 


She  let  it  fall.  Christophe  entered.  They  greeted  each  other 
in  a whisper,  without  looking  at  each  other.  He  was  gloomy, 
and  went  and  stood  by  the  window,  with  his  back  to  his  mother, 
and  he  stayed  without  speaking.  There  was  a great  struggle 
in  him.  He  knew  the  result  of  it  already,  and  was  trying  to 
delay  the  issue.  Louisa  dared  not  speak  a word  to  him  and 
provoke  the  answer  which  she  expected  and  feared.  She  forced 
herself  to  take  up  her  knitting  again,  hut  she  could  not  see 
what  she  was  doing,  and  she  dropped  her  stitches.  Outside  it 
was  raining.  After  a long  silence  Christophe  came  to  her.  She 
did  not  stir,  but  her  heart  was  beating.  Christophe  stood  still 
and  looked  at  her,  then,  suddenly,  he  went  down  on  his  knees 
and  hid  his  face  in  his  mother’s  dress,  and  without  saying  a 
word,  he  wept.  Then  she  understood  that  he  was  going  to  stay, 
and  her  heart  was  filled  with  a mortal  agony  of  joy — but  at 
once  she  was  seized  by  remorse,  for  she  felt  all  that  her  son 
was  sacrificing  for  her,  and  she  began  to  suffer  all  that  Chris- 
tophe had  suffered  when  it  was  she  whom  he  sacrificed.  She 
bent  over  him  and  covered  his  brow  and  his  hair  with  kisses. 
In  silence  their  tears  and  their  sorrow  mingled.  At  last  he 
raised  his  head,  and  Louisa  took  his  face  in  her  hands  and 
looked  into  his  eyes.  She  would  have  liked  to  say  to  him: 

“Go!” 

But  she  could  not. 

He  would  have  liked  to  say  to  her : 

“ I am  glad  to  stay.” 

But  he  could  not. 

The  situation  was  hopeless;  neither  of  them  could  alter  it. 
She  sighed  in  her  sorrow  and  love : 

“ Ah ! if  we  could  all  be  born  and  all  die  together ! ” Her 
simple  way  filled  him  with  tenderness;  he  dried  his  tears  and 
tried  to  smile  and  said: 

“We  shall  all  die  together.” 

She  insisted: 

“ Truly  you  will  not  go  ? ” 

He  got  up: 

“ I have  said  so.  Don’t  let  us  talk  about  it.  There  is  nothing 
more  to  be  said.” 

Christophe  kept  his  word;  he  never  talked  of  going  again. 


EEVOLT 


575 


but  he  could  not  help  thinking  of  it.  He  stayed,  but  he  made 
his  mother  pay  dearly  for  his  sacrifice  by  his  sadness  and  bad 
temper.  And  Louisa  tactlessly — much  more  tactlessly  than  she 
kne  Yy  never  failing  to  do  what  she  ought  not  to  have  done — 
Louisa,  who  knew  only  too  well  the  reason  of  his  grief,  insisted 
on  his  telling  her  what  it  was.  She  worried  him  with  her  af- 
fection, uneasy,  vexing,  argumentative,  reminding  him  every 
moment  that  they  were  very  different  from  each  other — and 
that  he  was  trying  to  forget.  How  often  he  had  tried  to  open 
his  heart  to  her ! But  just  as  he  was  about  to  speak  the  Great 
Wall  of  China  would  rise  between  them,  and  he  would  keep  his 
secrets  buried  in  himself.  She  would  guess,  but  she  never  dared 
invite  his  confidence,  or  else  she  could  not.  When  she  tried  she 
would  succeed  only  in  flinging  back  in  him  those  secrets  which 
weighed  so  sorely  on  him  and  which  he  was  so  longing  to  tell. 

A thousand  little  things,  harmless  tricks,  cut  her  off  from 
him  and  irritated  Christophe.  The  good  old  creature  was 
doting.  She  had  to  talk  about  the  local  gossip,  and  she  had 
that  nurse’s  tenderness  which  will  recall  all  the  silly  little  things 
of  the  earliest  years,  and  everything  that  is  associated  with  the 
cradle.  We  have  such  difficulty  in  issuing  from  it  and  growing 
into  men  and  women ! And  Juliet’s  nurse  must  forever  be  lay- 
ing before  us  our  duty-swaddling  clothes,  commonplace  thoughts, 
the  whole  unhappy  period  in  which  the  growing  soul  struggles 
against  the  oppression  of  vile  matter  or  stifling  surround- 
ings! 

And  with  it  all  she  had  little  outbursts  of  touching  tenderness 
— as  though  to  a little  child — which  used  to  move  him  greatly 
and  he  would  surrender  to  them — like  a little  child. 

The  worst  of  all  to  bear  was  living  from  morning  to  night 
as  they  did,  together,  always  together,  isolated  from  the  rest 
of  the  world.  When  two  people  suffer  and  cannot  help  each 
other’s  suffering,  exasperation  is  fatal ; each  in  the  end  holds  the 
other  responsible  for  the  suffering ; and  each  in  the  end  believes 
it.  It  were  better  to  be  alone;  alone  in  suffering. 

It  was  a daily  torment  for  both  of  them.  They  would  never 
have  broken  free  if  chance  had  not  come  to  break  the  cruel 
indecision,  against  which  they  were  struggling,  in  a way  that 
seemed  unfortunate — but  it  was  really  fortunate. 


576 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


It  was  a Sunday  in  October.  Four  o’clock  in  the  afternoon. 
The  weather  was  brilliant.  Christophe  had  stayed  in  his  room 
all  day,  chewing  the  cud  of  melancholy. 

He  could  bear  it  no  longer;  he  wanted  desperately  to  go  out, 
to  walk,  to  expend  his  energy,  to  tire  himself  oiit,  so  as  to  stop 
thinking. 

Eolations  with  his  mother  had  been  strained  since  the  day 
before.  He  was  just  going  out  without  saying  good-bye  to  her; 
but  on  the  stairs  he  thought  how  it  would  hurt  her  the  whole 
evening  when  she  was  left  alone.  He  went  back,  making  an 
excuse  of  having  left  something  in  his  room.  The  door  of  his 
mother’s  room  was  ajar.  He  put  his  head  in  through  the  aper- 
ture. He  watched  his  mother  for  a few  moments.  • • • 

(What  a place  those  two  seconds  were  to  fill  in  his  life  ever 

after!)  ...  ... 

Louisa  had  just  come  in  from  vespers.  She  was  sitting  in 
her  favorite  place,  the  recess  of  the  window.  The  wall  of 
the  house  opposite,  dirty  white  and  cracked,  obstructed  the  view, 
but  from  the  corner  where  she  sat  she  could  see  to  the  right 
through  the  yards  of  the  next  houses  a little  patch  of  lawn 
the  size  of  a pocket-handkerchief.  On  the  window  sill  a pot  of 
convolvulus  climbed  along  its  threads  and  over  this  frail  ladder 
stretched  its  tendrils  which  were  caressed  by  a ray  of  sunlight. 
Louisa  was  sitting  in  a low  chair  bending  over  her  great  Bible 
which  was  open  on  her  lap,  but  she  was  not  reading.  Her  hands 
were  laid  flat  on  the  book— her  hands  with  their  swollen  veins, 
worker’s  nails,  square  and  a little  bent— and  she  was  devouring 
with  loving  eyes  the  little  plant  and  the  patch  of  sky  she  eould 
see  through  it.  A sunbeam,  basking  on  the  green  gold  leaves, 
lit  up  her  tired  face,  with  its  rather  blotchy  complexion,  her 
white,  soft,  and  rather  thick  hair,  and  her  lips,  parted  in  a 
smile.  She  was  enjoying  her  hour  of  rest.  It  was  the  best  mo- 
ment ef  the  week  to  her.  She  made  use  of  it  to  sink  into  that 
state  so  sweet  to  those  who  suffer,  when  thoughts  dwell  on  noth- 
ing,  and  in  torpor  nothing  speaks  save  the  heart  and  that  is  half 

asleep.  . 

''Mother/^  he  said,  ''I  want  to  go  out.  I am  going  by 

Buir.  I shall  be  rather  late.” 

Louisa,  who  was  dozing  off,  trembled  a little.  Then  she 


EEVOLT 


577 


turned  her  head  towards  him  and  looked  at  him  with  her  calm, 
kind  eyes. 

“ Yes,  my  dear,  go,”  she  said.  “ You  are  right;  make  use  of 
the  fine  weather.” 

She  smiled  at  him.  He  smiled  at  her.  They  looked  at  each 
other  for  a moment,  then  they  said  good-night  affectionately, 
nodding  and  smiling  with  the  eyes. 

He  closed  the  door  softly.  She  slipped  back  into  her  reverie, 
which  her  son’s  smile  had  lit  up  with  a bright  ray  of  light  like 
the  sunbeam  on  the  pale  leaves  of  the  convolvulus. 

So  he  left  her — forever. 

• 

An  October  evening.  A pale  watery  sun.  The  drowsy  coun- 
try is  sinking  to  sleep.  Little  village  bells  are  slowly  ringing 
in  the  silence  of  the  fields.  Columns  of  smoke  rise  slowly  in 
the  midst  of  the  plowed  fields.  A fine  mist  hovers  in  the 
distance.  The  white  fogs  are  awaiting  the  coming  of  the  night 
to  rise.  ...  A dog  with  his  nose  to  the  ground  was  running 
in  circles  in  a field  of  beat.  Great  flocks  of  crows  whirled 
against  the  gray  sky. 

Christophe  went  on  dreaming,  having  no  fixed  object,  but  yet 
instinctively  he  was  walking  in  a definite  direction.  For  several 
weeks  his  walks  round  the  town  had  gravitated  whether  he  liked 
it  or  not  towards  another  village  where  he  was  sure  to  meet  a 
pretty  girl  who  attracted  him.  It  was  only  an  attraction,  but  it 
was  very  vivid  and  rather  disturbing.  Christophe  could  hardly 
do  without  loving  some  one ; and  his  heart  was  rarely  left  empty ; 
it  always  had  some  lovely  image  for  its  idol.  Generally  it  did 
not  matter  whether  the  idol  knew  of  his  love;  his  need  was  to 
love,  the  fire  must  never  be  allowed  to  go  out ; there  must  never 
be  darkness  in  his  heart. 

The  object  of  this  new  flame  was  the  daughter  of  a peasant 
whom  he  had  met,  as  Eliezer  met  Rebecca,  by  a well;  but  she 
did  not  give  him  to  drink ; she  threw  water  in  his  face.  She 
was  kneeling  by  the  edge  of  a stream  in  a hollow  in  the  bank 
between  two  willows,  the  roots  of  which  made  a sort  of  nest  about 
her ; she  was  washing  linen  vigorously ; and  her  tongue  was  not 
less  active  than  her  arms ; she  was  talking  and  laughing  loudly 
with  other  girls  of  the  village  who  were  washing  opposite  her  on 


578 


JBAN-CHEISTOPHE 


V' 

the  other  side  of  the  stream.  Christophe  was  lying  in  the  grass  a 
few  yards  away,  and,  with  his  chin  resting  in  his  hands,  he 
watched  them.  They  were  not  put  out  by  it;  they  Avent  on 
chattering  in  a style  which  sometimes  did  not  lack  bluntness. 

He  hardly  listened ; he  heard  only  the  sound  of  their  merry 
voices,  mingling  with  the  noise  of  their  washing  pots,  and  Avith 
the  distant  lowing  of  the  cows  in  the  meadows,  and  he  was 
dreaming,  never  taking  his  eyes  off  the  beautiful  washerwoman. 

A bright  young  face  would  make  him  glad  for  a whole  day.  It 
was  not  long  before  the  girls  made  out  which  of  them  he  was 
looking  at;  and  they  made  caustic  remarks  to  each  other;  the 
girl  he  preferred  was  not  the  least  cutting  in  the  observations 
she  threw  at  him.  As  he  did  not  budge,  she  got  up,  took  a 
bundle  of  linen  washed  and  wrung,  and  began  to  lay  it  out  on 
the  bushes  near  him  so  as  to  have  an  excuse  for  looking  at  him. 

As  she  passed  him  she  continued  to  splash  him  with  her  wet 
clothes  and  she  looked  at  him  holdly  and  laughed.  She  was 
thin  and  strong:  she  had  a fine  chin,  a little  underhung,  a short 
nose,  arching  eyebrows,  deep-set  blue  eyes,  bold,  bright  and  hard, 
a pretty  mouth  with  thick  lips,  pouting  a little  like  those  of  a , 
Greek  maid,  a mass  of  fair  hair  turned  up  in  a knot  on  her  i 
head,  and  a full  color.  She  carried  her  head  very  erect,  tittered 
at  every  word  she  said  and  even  when  she  said  nothing,  and 
walked  like  a man,  swinging  her  sunburned  arms.  She  went  on 
laying  out  her  linen  while  she  looked  at  Christophe  with  a pro-  : 
voking  smile — ^waiting  for  him  to  speak.  Christophe  stared  ; 

at  her  too;  but  he  had  no  desire  to  talk  to  her.  At  last  she  | 

burst  out  laughing  to  his  face  and  turned  back  towards  her  ' 

companions.  He  stayed  lying  where  he  was  until  evening  fell  ! 

and  he  saw  her  go  Adth  her  bundle  on  her  back  and  her  bare  i 
arms  crossed,  her  back  bent  under  her  load,  still  talking  and 
laughing. 

He  saw  her  again  a few  days  later  at  the  town  market  among 
heaps  of  carrots  and  tomatoes  and  cucumbers  and  cabbages.  He 
lounged  about  watching  the  crowd  of  women,  selling,  who  were 
standing  in  a line  by  their  baskets  like  slaves  for  sale.  The 
police  official  went  up  to  each  of  them  with  his  satchel  and  roll 
of  tickets,  receiving  a piece  of  money  and  giving  a paper.  The 
coffee  seller  went  from  row  to  row  with  a basket  full  of  little 


EEVOLT 


579 


coffee  pots.  And  an  old  nun,  plump  and  jovial,  went  round  the 
market  with  two  large  baskets  on  her  arms  and  without  any 
sort  of  humility  begged  vegetables,  or  talked  of  the  good  God. 
The  women  shouted : the  old  scales  with  their  green  painted 
pans  jingled  and  clanked  with  the  noise  of  their  chains ; the  big 
dogs  harnessed  to  the  little  carts  barked  loudly,  proud  of  their 
importance.  In  the  midst  of  the  rabble  Christophe  saw  Ee- 
becca. — Her  real  name  was  Lorchen  (Eleanor). — On  her  fair 
hair  she  had  placed  a large  cabbage  leaf,  green  and  white,  which 
made  a dainty  lace  cap  for  her.  She  was  sitting  on  a basket 
by  a heap  of  golden  onions,  little  pink  turnips,  haricot  beans, 
and  ruddy  apples,  and  she  was  munching  her  own  apples  one 
after  another  without  trying  to  sell  them.  She  never  stopped 
eating.  From  time  to  time  she  would  dry  her  chin  and  wipe  it 
with  her  apron,  brush  back  her  hair  with  her  arm,  rub  her 
cheek  against  her  shoulder,  or  her  nose  with  the  back  of  her 
hand.  Or,  with  her  hands  on  her  knees,  she  would  go  on  and 
on  throwing  a handful  of  shelled  peas  from  one  to  the  other. 
And  she  would  look  to  right  and  left  idly  and  indifferently. 
But  she  missed  nothing  of  what  was  going  on  about  her.  And 
without  seeming  to  do  so  she  marked  every  glance  cast  in  her 
direction.  She  saw  Christophe.  As  she  talked  to  her  customers 
she  had  a way  of  raising  her  eyebrows  and  looking  at  her  ad- 
mirer over  their  heads.  She  was  as  dignified  and  serious  as  a 
Pope  ; but  inwardly  she  was  laughing  at  Christophe.  And  he 
deserved  it;  he  stood  there  a few  yards  away  devouring  her 
with  his  eyes,  then  he  went  away  without  speaking  to  her.  He 
had  not  the  least  desire  to  do  so. 

He  came  back  more  than  once  to  prowl  round  the  market 
and  the  village  where  she  lived.  She  would  be  about  the  yard 
of  the  farm ; he  would  stop  on  the  road  to  look  at  her.  He  did 
not  admit  that  he  came  to  see  her,  and  indeed  he  did  so  almost 
unconsciously.  When,  as  often  happened,  he  was  absorbed  by 
the  composition  of  some  work  he  would  be  rather  like  a som- 
nambulist: while  his  conscious  soul  was  following  its  musical 
ideas  the  rest  of  him  would  be  delivered  up  to  the  other  uncon- 
scious soul  which  is  forever  watching  for  the  smallest  distrac- 
tion of  the  mind  to  take  the  freedom  of  the  fields.  He  was 
often  bewildered  by  the  buzzing  of  his  musical  ideas  when  he 


580 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


was  face  to  face  with  her;  and  he  would  go  on  dreaming  ag 
he  watched  her.  He  could  not  have  said  that  he  loved  her  ^ 
he  did  not  even  think  of  that;  it  gave  him  pleasure  to  see  her, 
nothing  more.  He  did  not  take  stock  of  the  desire  which  was 
always  bringing  him  back  to  her. 

His  insistence  was  remarked.  The  people  at  the  farm  joked 
about  it,  for  they  had  discovered  who  Christophe  was.  But  they 
left  him  in  peace;  for  he  was  quite  harmless.  He  looked  silly 
enough  in  truth;  but  he  never  bothered  about  it. 

There  was  a holiday  in  the  village.  Little  boys  were  crush* 
ing  crackers  between  stones  and  shouting  “ God  save  the  Em- 
peror! ” {‘"Kaiser  lele!  Eoch!”).  A cow  shut  up  in  the  barn 
and  the  men  drinking  at  the  inn  were  to  be  heard.  Kites  with 
long  tails  like  comets  dipped  and  swung  in  the  air  above  the 
fields.  The  fowls  were  scratching  frantically  in  the  straw  and 
the  golden  dung-heap ; the  wind  blew  out  their  feathers  like  the 
skirts  of  an  old  lady.  A pink  pig  was  sleeping  voluptuously  on 

his  side  in  the  sun.  i -•  .i,  • 

Christophe  made  his  way  towards  the  red  roof  of  the  inn 
of  the  Three  Kings  above  which  fioated  a little  flag.  Strings 
of  onions  hung  by  the  door,  and  the  windows  were  decorated 
with  red  and  yellow  flowers.  He  went  into  the  saloon,  filled 
with  tobacco  smoke,  where  yellowing  chromos  hung  on  the 
walls  and  in  the  place  of  honor  a colored  portrait  of  the  Em- 
peror-King surrounded  with  a wreath  of  oak  leaves.  People 
were  dancing.  Christophe  was  sure  his  charmer  would  be  there. 
He  sat  in  a corner  of  the  room  from  which  he  could  watch 
the  movement  of  the  dancers  undisturbed.  But  in  spite  of  all 
his  care  to  pass  unnoticed  Lorchen  spied  him  out  in  his  corner. 
While  she  waltzed  indefatigably  she  threw  quick  glances  at  him 
over  her  partner’s  shoulder  to  make  sure  that  he  was  still  look- 
ing  at  her;  and  it  amused  her  to  excite  him;  she  coquetted  with 
the  young  men  of  the  village,  laughing  the  while  with  her  wide 
mouth.  She  talked  a great  deal  and  said  silly  things  and  was 
not  very  different  from  the  girls  of  the  polite  world  who  think 
they  must  laugh  and  move  about  and  play  to  the  gallery  when 
anybody  looks  at  them,  instead  of  keeping  their  foolishness  to 


EEVOLT 


581 


themselves.  But  they  are  not  so  very  foolish  either;  for  they 
know  quite  well  that  the  gallery  only  looks  at  them  and  does  not 
listen  to  what  they  say. — ^With  his  elbows  on  the  table  and  his 
chin  in  his  hands  Christophe  watched  the  girFs  tricks  with 
burning,  furious  eyes ; his  mind  was  free  enough  not  to  be  taken 
in  by  her  wiles,  but  he  was  not  enough  himself  not  to  be  led 
on  by  them ; and  he  growled  with  rage  and  he  laughed  in  silence 
and  shrugged  his  shoulders  in  falling  into  the  snare. 

Not  only  the  girl  was  watching  him ; Lorchen’s  father  also 
had  his  eyes  on  him.  Thick-set  and  short,  bald-headed— a big 
head  with  a short  nose— sunburned  skull  with  a fringe  of  hair 
that  had  been  fair  and  hung  in  thick  curls  like  Diirer's  St.  John, 
clean-shaven,  expressionless  face,  with  a long  pipe  in  the  corner 
of  his  mouth,  he  was  talking  very  deliberately  to  some  other 
peasants  while  all  the  time  he  was  watching  Christophers  panto- 
mime out  of  the  corner  of  his  eye ; and  he  laughed  softly.  After 
a moment  he  coughed  and  a malicious  light  shone  in  his  little  gray 
eyes  and  he  came  and  sat  at  Christophers  table.  Christophe  was  an- 
noyed and  turned  and  scowled  at  him ; he  met  the  cunning  look 
of  the  old  man,  who  addressed  Christophe  familiarly  without  tak- 
ing his  pipe  from  his  lips.  Christophe  knew  him ; he  knew  him 
for  a common  old  man ; but  his  weakness  for  his  daughter  made 
him  indulgent  towards  the  father  and  even  gave  him  a queer 
pleasure  in  being  with  him ; the  old  rascal  saw  that.  After  talk- 
ing about  rain  and  fine  weather  and  some  chaffing  reference  to 
the  pretty  girls  in  the  room,  and  a remark  on  Christophers  not 
dancing  he  concluded  that  Christophe  was  right  not  to  put 
himself  out  and  that  it  was  much  better  to  sit  at  table  with  a 
mug  in  his  hand ; without  ceremony  he  invited  himself 
to  have  a drink.  While  he  drank  the  old  man  went  on  talking 
deliberately  as  always.  He  spoke  about  his  affairs,  the  difficulty 
of  gaining  a livelihood,  the  bad  weather  and  high  prices.  Chris- 
tophe hardly  listened  and  only  replied  with  an  occasional  grunt ; 
he  was  not  interested;  he  was  looking  at  Lorchen.  Christophe 
wondered  what  had  procured  him  the  honor  of  the  old  manrs 
company  and  confidences.  At  last  he  understood.  When  the 
old  man  had  exhausted  his  complaints  he  passed  on  to  another 
chapter;  he  praised  the  quality  of  his  produce,  his  vegetables. 


582 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


his  fowls,  his  eggs,  his  milk,  and  suddenly  he  asked  if  Christophe 
could  not  procure  him  the  custom  of  the  Palace.  Christophe 
started : 

How  the  devil  did  he  know  ? . . . He  knew  him  then  ? 

Oh,  yes,”  said  the  old  man.  Everything  is  known  . . y 
He  did  not  add: 

. . when  you  take  the  trouble  to  make  enquiries.” 

But  Christophe  added  it  for  him.  He  took  a wicked  pleasure 
in  telling  him  that  although  everything  was  known,  ^^he  was 
no  doubt  unaware  that  he  had  just  quarreled  with  the  Court 
and  that  if  he  had  ever  been  able  to  flatter  himself  on  having 
some  credit  with  the  servants^  quarters  and  butchers  of  the 
Palace — (which  he  doubted  strongly) — that  credit  at  present 
was  dead  and  buried.  The  old  man^s  lips  twitched  impercepti- 
bly. However,  he  was  not  put  out  and  after  a moment  he  asked 
if  Christophe  could  not  at  least  recommend  him  to  such  and 
such  a family.  And  he  mentioned  all  those  with  whom  Chris- 
tophe had  had  dealings;  for  he  had  informed  himself  of 
them  at  the  market,  and  there  was  no  danger  of  his  forgetting 
any  detail  that  might  be  useful  to  him.  Christophe  would  have 
been  furious  at  such  spying  upon  him  had  he  not  rather  wanted  ^ 
to  laugh  at  the  thought  that  the  old  man  would  be  robbed  in  ^ 

spite  of  all  his  cunning  (for  he  had  no  doubt  of  the  value  of 
the  recommendation  he  was  asking — a recommendation  more 
likely  to  make  him  lose  his  customers  than  to  procure  him  fresh  ; 

ones).  So  he  let  him  empty  all  his  bag  of  clumsy  tricks  and  • 

answered  neither  Yes  ” nor  No.”  But  the  peasant  persisted  i 

and  finally  he  came  down  to  Christophe  and  Louisa  whom  he  ^ 

had  kept  for  the  end,  and  expressed  his  keen  desire  to  provide  ■ 

them  with  milk,  butter  and  cream.  He  added  that  as  Chris-  i 

tophe  was  a musician  nothing  was  so  good  for  the  voice  as  a 
fresh  egg  swallowed  raw  morning  and  evening ; and  he  tried  hard 
to  make  him  let  him  provide  him  with  these,  warm  from  the 
hen.  The  idea  of  the  old  peasant  taking  him  for  a singer  made 
Christophe  roar  with  laughter.  The  peasant  took  advantage  of 
that  to  order  another  bottle.  And  then  having  got  all  he  could 
out  of  Christophe  for  the  time  being  he  went  away  without 
further  ceremony. 

Night  had  fallen.  The  dancing  had  become  more  and  more 


EEVOLT  583 

excited.  Lorchen  had  ceased  to  pay  any  attention  to  Christophe ; 
she  was  too  busy  turning  the  head  of  a young  lout  of  the  village, 
the  son  of  a rich  farmer,  for  whom  all  the  girls  were  competing. 
Christophe  was  interested  by  the  struggle;  the  young  women 
smiled  at  each  other  and  would  have  been  only  too  pleased  to 
scratch  each  other.  Christophe  forgot  himself  and  prayed  for 
the  triumph  of  Lorchen.  But  when  her  triumph  was  won  he 
felt  a little  downcast.  He  was  enraged  by  it.  He  did  not  love 
Lorchen;  he  did  not  want  to  be  loved  by  her;  it  was  natural 
that  she  should  love  anybody  she  liked. — No  doubt.  But  it  was 
not  pleasant  to  receive  so  little  sympathy  himself  when  he  had 
so  much  need  of  giving  and  receiving.  Here,  as  in  the  tovra, 
he  was  alone.  All  these  people  were  only  interested  in  him 
while  they  could  make  use  of  him  and  then  laugh  at  him.  He 
sighed,  smiled  as  he  looked  at  Lorchen,  whom  her  joy  in  the 
discomfiture  of  her  rivals  had  made  ten  times  prettier  than 
ever,  and  got  ready  to  go.  It  was  nearly  nine.  He  had  fully 
two  miles  to  go  to  the  town. 

He  got  up  from  the  table  when  the  door  opened  and  a hand- 
ful of  soldiers  burst  in.  Their  entry  dashed  the  gaiety  of  the 
place.  The  people  began  to  whisper.  A few  couples  stopped 
dancing  to  look  uneasily  at  the  new  arrivals.  The  peasants 
standing  near  the  door  deliberately  turned  their  backs  on  them 
and  began  to  talk  among  themselves;  but  without  seeming  to 
do  so  they  presently  contrived  to  leave  room  for  them  to  pass. 
For  some  time  past  the  whole  neighborhood  had  been  at  logger- 
heads  with  the  garrisons  of  the  fortresses  round  it.  The  sol- 
diers were  bored  to  death  and  wreaked  their  vengeance  on  the 
peasants.  They  made  coarse  fun  of  them,  maltreated  them, 
and  used  the  women  as  though  they  were  in  a conquered  country. 
The  week  before  some  of  them,  full  of  wine,  had  disturbed  a 
feast  at  a neighboring  village  and  had  half  killed  a farmer. 
Christophe,  who  knew  these  things,  shared  the  state  of  mind  of 
the  peasant,  and  he  sat  down  again  and  waited  to  see  what 
would  happen. 

The  soldiers  were  not  worried  by  the  ill-will  with  which  their 
entry  was  received,  and  went  noisily  and  sat  down  at  the  full 
tables,  jostling  the  people  away  from  them  to  make  room;  it 
was  the  affair  of  a moment.  Most  of  the  people  went  away 


584 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


grumbling.  An  old  man  sitting  at  the  end  of  a bench  did  not  | 
move  quickly  enough;  they  lifted  the  bench  and  the  old  man 
toppled  over  amid  roars  of  laughter.  Christophe  felt  the  blood 
rushing  to  his  head;  he  got  up  indignantly;  but,  as  he  was  on  ■ 
the  point  of  interfering,  he  saw  the  old  man  painfully  pick  | 
himself  up  and  instead  of  complaining  humbly  crave  pardon.  ? 
Two  of  the  soldiers  came  to  Christophers  table ; he  watched  them 
come  and  clenched  his  fists.  But  he  did  not  have  to  defend 
himself.  They  were  two  tall,  strong,  good-humored  louts,  who 
had  followed  sheepishly  one  or  two  daredevils  and  were  trying  to 
imitate  them.  They  were  intimidated  by  Christophers  defiant 
manner,  and  when  he  said  curtly : This  place  is  taken,rr  they 
hastily  begged  his  pardon  and  withdrew  to  their  end  of  the 
bench  so  as  not  to  disturb  him.  There  had  been  a masterful 
inflection  in  his  voice;  their  natural  servility  came  to  the  fore. 
They  saw  that  Christophe  was  not  a peasant. 

Christophe  was  a little  mollified  by  their  submission,  and  . 

was  able  to  watch  things  more  coolly.  It  was  not  difficult  to  see  ; 

that  the  gang  were  led  by  a non-commissioned  officer — a little  j 
bull-dog  of  a man  with  hard  eyes — with  a rascally,  hypocritical 
and  wicked  face ; he  was  one  of  the  heroes  of  the  affray  of  the  | 
Sunday  before.  He  was  sitting  at  the  table  next  to  Christophe.  ^ 
He  was  drunk  already  and  stared  at  the  people  and  threw  in- 
sulting sarcasms  at  them  which  they  pretended  not  to  hear.  ! 
He  attacked  especially  the  couples  dancing,  describing  their 
physical  advantages  or  defects  with  a coarseness  of  expression  • 
which  made  his  companions  laugh.  The  girls  blushed  and  j 
tears  came  to  their  eyes ; the  young  men  ground  their  teeth  and  I 
raged  in  silence.  Their  tormentor’s  eyes  wandered  slowly  round  | 
the  room,  sparing  nobody;  Christophe  saw  them  moving  to- 
wards  himself.  He  seized  his  mug,  and  clenched  his  fist  on  the 
table  and  waited,  determined  to  throw  the  liquor  at  his  head 
on  the  first  insult.  He  said  to  himself : 

I am  mad.  It  would  be  better  to  go  away.  They  will  slit 
me  up;  and  then  if  I escape  they  will  put  me  in  prison;  the 
game  is  not  worth  the  candle.  I’d  better  go  before  he  provokes 
me.^^ 

But  his  pride  would  not  let  him,  he  would  not  seem  to  be 
running  away  from  such  brutes  as  these.  The  officer’s  cunning 


EEVOLT 


585 


brutal  stare  was  fixed  on  him.  Christophe  stiffened  and  glared 
at  him  angrily.  The  officer  looked  at  him  for  a moment  ; 
Christophe’s  face  irritated  him;  he  nudged  his  neighbor^ and 
pointed  out  the  young  man  with  a snigger;  and  he  opened  his 
lips  to  insult  him.  Christophe  gathered  himself  together  and 
was  just  about  to  fling  his  mug  at  him.  . . . Once  more 

chance  saved  him.  Just  as  the  drunken  man  was  about  to  speak 
an  awkward  couple  of  dancers  bumped  into  him  and  made  him 
drop  his  glass.  He  turned  furiously  and  let  loose  a flood  of  in- 
sults. His  attention  was  distracted;  he  forgot  Christophe. 
Christophe  waited  for  a few  minutes  longer;  then  seeing  that 
his  enemy  had  no  thought  of  going  on  with  his  remarks  he  got 
up,  slowly  took  his  hat  and  walked  leisurely  towards  the  door. 
He  did  not  take  his  eyes  off  the  bench  where  the  other  was  sit- 
ting, just  to  let  him  feel  that  he  was  not  giving  in  to  him.  But 
the  officer  had  forgotten  him  altogether;  no  one  took  any  notice 
of  him. 

He  was  just  turning  the  handle  of  the  door ; in  a few  seconds 
he  would  have  been  outside.  But  it  was  ordered  that  he  should 
not  leave  so  soon.  An  angry  murmur  rose  at  the  end  of  the 
room.  When  the  soldiers  had  drunk  they  had  decided  to  dance. 
And  as  all  the  girls  had  their  cavaliers  they  drove  away  their 
partners,  who  submitted  to  it.  But  Lorehen  was  not  going  to 
put  up  with  that.  It  was  not  for  nothing  that  she  had  her  bold! 
eyes  and  her  firm  chin  which  so  charmed  Christophe.  She 
was  waltzing  like  a mad  thing  when  the  officer  who  had  fixed 
his  choice  upon  her  came  and  pulled  her  partlier  away  from 
her.  She  stamped  with  her  foot,  screamed,  and  pushed  the 
soldier  away,  declaring  that  she  would  never  dance  with  such  a 
boor.  He  pursued  her.  He  dispersed  with  his  fists  the  people 
behind  whom  she  was  trying  to  hide.  At  last  she  took  refuge 
behind  a table;  and  then  protected  from  him  for  a moment 
she  took  breath  to  scream  abuse  at  him ; she  saw  that  all  her 
resistance  would  be  useless  and  she  stamped  with  rage  and 
groped  for  the  most  violent  words  to  fling  at  him  and  compared 
his  face  to  that  of  various  animals  of  the  farm-yard.  He  leaned 
towards  her  over  the  table,  smiled  wickedly,  and  his  eyes  glit- 
tered with  rage.  Suddenly  he  pounced  and  jumped  over  the 
table.  He  caught  hold  of  her.  She  struggled  with  feet  and  fists 


586 


JEAN-CHRISTOPHE 


like  the  cow-woman  she  was.  He  was  not  too  steady  on  his 
legs  and  almost  lost  his  balance.  In  his  fury  he  flung  her 
against  the  wall  and  slapped  her  face.  He  had  no  time  to  do  it 
again;  some  one  had  jumped  on  his  back,  and  was  cuffing  him 
and  kicking  him  back  into  the  crowd.  It  was  Christophe  who 
had  flung  himself  on  him,  overturning  tables  and  people  without 
stopping  to  think  of  what  he  was  doing.  Mad  with  rage^  the 
officer  turned  and  drew  his  saber.  Before  he  could  make  use 
of  it  Christophe  felled  him  with  a stool.  The  whole  thing  had 
been  so  sudden  that  none  of  the  spectators  had  time  to  think  of 
interfering.  The  other  soldiers  ran  to  Christophe  drawing  their 
sabers.  The  peasants  flung  themselves  at  them.  The  uproar 
became  general.  Mugs  flew  across  the  room;  the  tables  were 
overturned.  The  peasants  woke  up ; they  had  old  scores  to  pay 
off.  The  men  rolled  about  on  the  ground  and  bit  each  other 
savagely.  Lorchen’s  partner,  a stolid  farm-hand,  had  caught 
hold  of  the  head  of  the  soldier  who  had  just  insulted  him  and 
was  banging  it  furiously  against  the  wall.  Lorchen,  armed  with 
a cudgel,  was  striking  out  blindly.  The  other  girls  ran  away 
screaming,  except  for  a few  wantons  who  joined  in  heartily. 
One  of  them — a fat  little  fair  girl — seeing  a gigantic  soldier — 
the  same  who  had  sat  at  Christophers  table — crushing  in  the 
chest  of  his  prostrate  adversary  with  his  boot,  ran  to  the  Are, 
came  back,  dragged  the  brute^s  head  backwards  and  flung  a 
handful  of  burning  ashes  into  his  eyes.  The  man  bellowed. 
The  girl  gloated,  abused  the  disarmed  enemy,  whom  the  peas- 
ants now  thwacked  at  their  ease.  At  last  the  soldiers  flnding 
themselves  on  the  losing  side  rushed  away  leaving  two  of  their 
number  on  the  floor.  The  flght  went  on  in  the  village  street. 
They  burst  into  the  houses  crying  murder,  and  trying  to  smash 
everything.  The  peasants  followed  them  with  forks,  and  set 
their  savage  dogs  on  them.  A third  soldier  fell  with  his 
belly  cleft  by  a fork.  The  others  had  to  fly  and  were  hunted 
out  of  the  village,  and  from  a distance  they  shouted  as  they 
ran  across  the  fields  that  they  would  fetch  their  comrades  and 
come  back  immediately. 

The  peasants,  left  masters  of  the  field,  returned  to  the  inn; 
they  were  exultant;  it  was  a revenge  for  all  the  outrages  they 
had  suffered  for  so  long.  They  had  as  yet  no  thought  of  the 


EEVOLT 


587 


consequences  of  the  affray.  They  all  talked  at  once  and  boasted 
of  their  prowess.  They  fraternized  with  Christophe,  who  was 
delighted  to  feel  in  touch  with  them.  Lorchen  came  and  took 
his  hand  and  held  it  for  a moment  in  her  rough  paw  while  she 
giggled  at  him.  She  did  not  think  him  ridiculous  for  the  mo- 
ment. 

They  looked  to  the  wounded.  Among  the  villagers  there  were 
only  a few  teeth  knocked  out,  a few  ribs  broken  and  a few  slight 
bruises  and  scars.  But  it  was  very  different  with  the  soldiers. 
They  were  seriously  injured:  the  giant  whose  eyes  had  been 
burned  had  had  his  shoulder  half  cut  off  with  a hatchet;  the 
man  whose  belly  had  been  pierced  was  dying;  and  there  was 
the  officer  who  had  been  knocked  down  by  Christ ophe.  They 
were  laid  out  by  the  hearth.  The  officer,  who  was  the  least 
injured  of  the  three,  had  just  opened  his  eyes.  He  took  a long 
look  at  the  ring  of  peasants  leaning  over  him,  a look  filled  with 
hatred.  Hardly  had  he  regained  consciousness  of  what  had 
happened  than  he  began  to  abuse  them.  He  swore  that  he 
would  be  avenged  and  would  settle  their  hash,  the  whole  lot 
of  them ; he  choked  with  rage ; it  was  palpable  that  if  he  could 
he  would  exterminate  them.  They  tried  to  laugh,  but  their 
laughter  was  forced.  A young  peasant  shouted  to  the  wounded 
man : 

Hold  your  gab  or  I’ll  kill  you.” 

The  officer  tried  to  get  up,  and  he  glared  at  the  man  who 
had  just  spoken  to  him  with  blood-shot  eyes : 

Swine!  ” he  said.  ^^Kill  me!  They’ll  cut  your  heads  off.” 

He  went  on  shouting.  The  man  who  had  been  ripped  up 
screamed  like  a bleeding  pig.  The  third  was  stiff  and  still  like 
a dead  man.  A crushing  terror  came  over  the  peasants.  Lor- 
chen and  some  women  carried  the  wounded  men  to  another 
room.  The  shouts  of  the  officer  and  the  screams  of  the  dying 
man  died  away.  The  peasants  were  silent;  they  stood  fixed  in 
the  circle  as  though  the  three  bodies  were  still  lying  at  their 
feet ; they  dared  not  budge  and  looked  at  each  other  in  panic. 
At  last  Lorchen’s  father  said: 

You  have  done  a fine  piece  of  work ! ” 

There  was  an  agonized  murmuring;  their  throats  were  dry. 
Then  they  began  all  to  talk  at  once.  At  first  they  whispered  as 


588 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


though  they  were  afraid  of  eavesdroppers,  but  soon  they  raised 
their  voices  and  became  more  vehement ; they  accused  each  other ; 
they  blamed  each  other  for  the  blows  they  had  struck.  Th^ 
dispute  became  acrid;  they  seemed  to  be  on  the  point  of  going 
for  each  other.  Lorchen’s  father  brought  them  to  unanimity. 
With  his  arms  folded  he  turned  towards  Christophe  and  jerked 
his  chin  at  him : 

And/^  he  said,  what  business  had  this  fellow  here  ? 

The  wrath  of  the  rabble  was  turned  on  Christophe: 

^^True!  True they  cried.  ^^He  began  it!  But  for  him 
nothing  would  have  happened.^^ 

Christophe  was  amazed.  He  tried  to  reply : 

You  know  perfectly  that  what  I did  was  for  you,  not  for 
myself.^^ 

But  they  replied  furiously: 

Aren’t  we  capable  of  defending  ourselves?  Do  you  think 
we  need  a gentleman  from  the  town  to  tell  us  what  we  should 
do?  Who  asked  your  advice?  And  besides  who  asked  you  to 
come  ? Couldn’t  you  stay  at  home  ? ” 

Christophe  shrugged  his  shoulders  and  turned  towards  the 
door.  But  Lorchen’s  father  barred  the  way,  screaming: 

That’s  it ! That’s  it ! ” he  shouted.  He  would  like  to 
cut  away  now  after  getting  us  all  into  a scrape.  He  shan’t  go ! ” 
The  peasants  roared: 

He  shan’t  go ! He’s  the  cause  of  it  all.  He  shall  pay  for  it 
all ! ” 

They  surrounded  him  and  shook  their  fists  at  him.  Chris- 
tophe saw  the  circle  of  threatening  faees  closing  in  upon  him ; 
fear  had  infuriated  them.  He  said  nothing,  made  a face  of 
disgust,  threw  his  hat  on  the  table,  went  and  sat  at  the  end  of 
the  room,  and  turned  his  back  on  them. 

But  Lorchen  was  angry  and  flung  herself  at  the  peasants. 
Her  pretty  face  was  red  and  scowling  with  rage.  She  pushed 
back  the  people  who  were  crowding  round  Christophe: 

Cowards ! Brute  beasts ! ” she  cried.  Aren’t  you 
ashamed?  You  want  to  pretend  that  he  brought  it  all  on  you! 
As  if  they  did  not  see  you  all!  As  if  there  was  a single  one 
of  you  who  had  not  hit  out  his  hand  as  he  could ! ...  If 

there  had  been  a man  who  had  stayed  with  his  arms  folded 


EEVOLT 


589 


while  the  others  were  fighting  I would  spit  in  his  face  and  call 
him:  Coward!  Coward!  . . 

The  peasants,  surprised  by  this  unexpected  outburst,  stayed 
for  a moment  in  silence ; they  began  to  shout  again : ^ 

“ He  began  it ! Nothing  would  have  happened  but  for  him.  * 

In  vain  did  Lorchen’s  father  make  signs  to  his  daughter. 

She  went  on : , r 

“ Yes.  He  did  begin  it ! That  is  nothing  for  you  to  boast 
about.  But  for  him  you  would  have  let  them  insult  you.  You 
would  have  let  them  insult  you.  You  cowards ! You  funks ! 

She  abused  her  partner: 

“ And  you,  you  said  nothing.  Your  heart  was  in  your  mouth ; 
you  held  out  your  bottom  to  be  kicked.  You  would  have 
thanked  them  for  it!  Aren’t  you  ashamed?  . . . Aren’t 

you  all  ashamed?  You  are  not  men ! You’re  as  brave  as  sheep 
with  your  noses  to  the  ground  all  the  time ! He  had  to  give 
you  an  example ! — And  now  you  want  to  make  him  bear  every* 
thing?  . . . Well,  I tell  you,  that  shan’t  happen!  He 
fought  for  us.  Either  you  save  him  or  you’ll  suffer  along  with 
him.  I give  you  my  word  for  it ! ” 

Lorchen’s  father  caught  her  arm.  He  was  beside  himself  and 
shouted : 

“Shut  up!  Shut  up!  . . . Will  you  shut  up,  you 

bitch!  ” 

But  she  thrust  him  away  and  went  on  again.  The  peasants 
yelled.  She  shouted  louder  than  they  in  a shrill,  piercing 
scream : 

“What  have  you  to  say  to  it  all?  Do  you  think  I did  not 
see  you  just  now  kicking  the  man  who  is  lying  half  dead  in 
the  next  room?  And  you,  show  me  your  hands!  . , 
There’s  blood  on  them.  Do  you  think  I did  not  see  you  with 
your  knife?  I shall  tell  everything  I saw  if  you  do  the  least 
thing  against  him.  I will  have  you  all  condemned.” 

The  infuriated  peasants  thrust  their  faces  into  Lorchen’s 
and  bawled  at  her.  One  of  them  made  as  though  to  box  her 
ears,  but  Lorchen’s  lover  seized  him  by  the  scruff  of  the  neck 
and  they  jostled  each  other  and  were  on  the  point  of  coming 
to  blows.  An  old  man  said  to  Lorchen: 

“ If  we  are  condemned,  you  will  be  too.” 


590 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


I shall  be  too/^  she  said^  I am  not  so  cowardly  as  you.”  f 

And.  she  burst  out  again. 

They  did  not  know  what  to  do.  They  turned  to  her  father: 

CanT  you  make  her  be  silent  ? ” ; 

The  old  man  had  understood  that  it  was  not  wise  to  push  i 
Lorchen  too  far.  He  signed  to  them  to  be  calm.  Silence  came.  * 
Lorchen  went  on  talking  alone;  then  as  she  found  no  response,  ^ 
like  a fire  without  fuel,  she  stopped.  After  a moment  her 
father  coughed  and  said: 

^^Well,  then,  what  do  you  want?  You  don’t  want  to  ruin 
us.” 

She  said: 

I want  him  to  be  saved.” 

They  began  to  think.  Christophe  had  not  moved  from  where 
he  sat;  he  was  stiff  and  proud  and  seemed  not  to  understand 
that  they  were  discussing  him ; but  he  was  touched  by  Lorchen’s 
intervention.  Lorchen  seemed  not  to  be  aware  of  his  presence; 
she  was  leaning  against  the  table  by  which  he  was  sitting,  and 
glaring  defiantly  at  the  peasants,  who  were  smoking  and  looking 
down  at  the  ground.  At  last  her  father  chewed  his  pipe  for  a 
little  and  said : ! 

Whether  we  say  anything  or  not, — ^if  he  stays  he  is  done  ^ 
for.  The  sergeant  major  recognized  him;  he  won’t  spare  him. 
There  is  only  one  thing  for  him  to  do — ^to  get  away  at  once  to  ^ 
the  other  side  of  the  frontier.” 

He  had  come  to  the  conclusion  it  would  be  better  for  them  all  ^ 
if  Christophe  escaped;  in  that  way  he  would  admit  his  guilt,  ] 

and  when  he  was  no  longer  there  to  defend  himself  it  would  i 

not  be  difficult  to  put  upon  him  the  burden  of  the  affair.  The 
others  agreed.  They  understood  each  other  perfectly. — Now  ! 

that  they  had  come  to  a decision  they  were  all  in  a hurry  for 
Christophe  to  go.  Without  being  in  the  least  embarrassed  by 
what  they  had  been  saying  a moment  before  they  came  up  to 
him  and  pretended  to  be  deeply  interested  in  his  welfare. 

There  is  not  a moment  to  lose,  sir,”  said  Lor^^^^u’*?  father. 

They  will  come  back.  Half  an  hour  to  go  to  the  fortress. 
Half  an  hour  to  come  back.  . . . There  is  only  just  time  to 

slip  away.”  \ 

Christophe  had  risen.  He  too  had  been  thinking.  He  knew 


EEVOLT 


591 


that  if  he  stayed  he  was  lost.  But  to  go,  to  go  without  seeing 
his  mother?  . . . ISTo.  It  was  impossible.  He  said  that 

he  would  first  go  back  to  the  town  and  would  still  have  time 
to  go  during  the  night  and  cross  the  frontier.  But  they  pro- 
tested loudly.  They  had  barred  the  door  just  before  to  prevent 
his  going;  now  they  wanted  to  prevent  his  not  going.  If  he 
went  back  to  the  town  he  was  certain  to  be  caught ; they  would 
know  at  the  fortress  before  he  got  there;  they  would  await  him 
at  home. — He  insisted.  Lorchen  had  understood  him : 

“You  want  to  see  your  mother?  . . . I_ will  go  instead 

of  you.” 

“When?” 

“ To-night.” 

“Really!  You  will  do  that?” 

“I  will  go.” 

She  took  her  shawl  and  put  it  round  her  head. 

“Write  a letter.  I will  take  it  to  her.  Come  with  me.  I 
will  give  you  some  ink.” 

She  took  him  into  the  inner  room.  At  the  door  she  turned, 
and  addressing  her  lover: 

“ And  do  you  get  ready,”  she  said.  “ You  must  take  him. 
You  must  not  leave  him  until  you  have  seen  him  over  the 
frontier.” 

He  was  as  eager  as  anybody  to  see  Christophe  over  into 
France  and  farther  if  possible. 

Lorchen  went  into  the  next  room  with  Christophe.  He  was 
still  hesitating.  He  was  torn  by  grief  at  the  thought  that 
he  would  not  be  able  to  embrace  his  mother.  When  would  he 
see  her  again  ? She  was  so  old,  so  worn  out,  so  lonely ! This 
fresh  blow  would  be  too  much  for  her.  What  would  become  of 
her  without  him  ? . . . But  what  would  become  of  him  if 

he  stayed  and  were  condemned  and  put  in  prison  for  years? 
Would  not  that  even  more  certainly  mean  destitution  and  mis- 
ery for  her?  If  he  were  free,  though  far  away,  he  could  alwaj's 
help  her,  or  she  could  come  to  him. — He  had  not  time  to  see 
clearly  in  his  mind.  Lorchen  took  his  hands — she  stood  near 
him  and  looked  at  him;  their  faces  were  almost  touching;  she 
threw  her  arms  round  his  neck  and  kissed  his  mouth: 

“ Quick ! Quick ! ” she  whispered,  pointing  to  the  table. 


592 


JEAN-CHKISTOPHE 


He  gave  up  trying  to  think.  He  sat  down.  She  tore  a sheet 
of  squared  paper  with  red  lines  from  an  account  book. 

He  wrote: 

My  Dear  Mother  : Forgive  me.  I am  going  to  hurt  you 
much.  I cannot  do  otherwise.  I have  done  nothing  wrong. 
But  now  I must  fly  and  leave  the  country.  The  girl  who 
brings  you  this  letter  will  tell  you  everything.  I wanted  to 
say  good-bye  to  you.  They  will  not  let  me.  They  say  that  I 
should  be  arrested.  I am  so  unhappy  that  I have  no  will  left. 
I am  going  over  the  frontier  but  I shall  stay  near  it  until  you 
have  written  to  me ; the  girl  who  brings  you  my  letter  will  bring 
me  your  reply.  Tell  me  what  to  do.  I will  do  whatever  you 
say.  Do  you  want  me  to  come  back?  Tell  me  to  come  back! 
I cannot  bear  the  idea  of  leaving  you  alone.  What  will  you 
do  to  live  ? Forgive  me  1 Forgive  me ! I love  you  and  I kiss 
you  . . 

Be  quick,  sir,  or  we  shall  be  too  late,^^  said  Lorchen^s  swain, 
pushing  the  door  open. 

Christophe  wrote  his  name  hurriedly  and  gave  the  letter  to 
Lorchen. 

You  will  give  it  to  her  yourself  ? 

I am  going,^^  she  said. 

She  was  already  ready  to  go. 

To-morrow,''  she  went  on,  ''I  will  bring  you  her  reply; 
you  must  wait  for  me  at  Leiden, — (the  first  station  beyond  the 
German  frontier) — on  the  platform." 

(She  had  read  Christophe's  letter  over  his  shoulder  as  he 
wrote.) 

You  will  tell  me  everything  and  how  she  bore  the  blow  and 
everything  she  says  to  you?  You  will  not  keep  anything  from 
me?"  said  Christophe  beseechingly, 
will  tell  you  everything." 

They  were  not  so  free  to  talk  now,  for  the  young  man  was 
at  the  door  watching  them : 

And  then,  Herr  Christophe,"  said  Lorchen,  I will  go  and 
see  her  sometimes  and  I will  send  you  news  of  her ; do  not  be 
anxious." 


EEVOLT 


593 


She  shook  hands  with  him  vigorously  like  a man. 

“ Let  us  go ! ” said  the  peasant. 

“ Let  us  go ! ” said  Christophe. 

All  three  went  out.  On  the  road  they  parted.  Lorchen  went 
one  way  and  Christophe,  with  his  guide,  the  other.  They  did 
not  speak.  The  crescent  moon  veiled  in  mists  was  disappear- 
ing behind  the  woods.  A pale  light  hovered  over  the  fields.  In 
the  hollows  the  mists  had  risen  thick  and  milky  white.  The 
shivering  trees  were  bathed  in  the  moisture  of  the  air.  They 
were  not  more  than  a few  minutes  gone  from  the  village  when 
the  peasant  flung  back  sharply  and  signed  to  Christophe  to  stop. 
They  listened.  On  the  road  in  front  of  them  they  heard  the 
regular  tramp  of  a troop  of  soldiers  coming  towards  them. 
Th^e  peasant  climbed  the  hedge  into  the  fields.  Christophe  fol- 
lowed him.  They  walked  away  across  the  plowed  fields.  They 
heard  the  soldiers  go  by  on  the  road.  In  the  darkness  the 
peasant  shook  his  fist  at  them.  Christophers  heart  stopped  like 
a hunted  animal  that  hears  the  baying  of  the  hounds.  They 
returned  to  the  road  again,  avoiding  the  villages  and  isolated 
farms  where  the  barking  of  the  dogs  betrayed  them  to  the  coun- 
tryside. On  the  slope  of  a wooded  hill  they  saw  in  the  distance 
the  red  lights  of  the  railway.  They  took  the  direction  of  the 
signals  and  decided  to  go  to  the  first  station.  It  was  not  easy. 
As  they  came  down  into  the  valley  they  plunged  into  the  fog. 
They  had  to  jump  a few  streams.  Soon  they  found  themselves 
in  immense  fields  of  beetroot  and  plowed  land;  they  thought 
they  would  never  be  through.  The  plain  was  uneven;  there 
were  little  rises  and  hollows  into  which  they  were  always  in  dan- 
ger of  falling.  At  last  after  walking  blindly  through  the  fog 
they  saw  suddenly  a few  yards  away  the  signal  light  of  the  rail- 
way at  the  top  of  an  embankment.  They  climbed  the  bank.  At 
the  risk  of  being  run  over  they  followed  the  rails  until  they 
were  within  a hundred  yards  of  the  station ; then  they  took  to 
the  road  again.  They  reached  the  station  twenty  minutes  before 
the  train  went.  In  spite  of  Lorchen’s  orders  the  peasant  left 
Christophe;  he  was  in  a hurry  to  go  back  to  see  what  had  hap- 
pened to  the  others  and  to  his  own  property. 

Christophe  took  a ticket  for  Leiden  and  waited  alone  in  the 
empty  third-class  waiting  room.  An  official  who  was  asleep 


594 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


on  a seat  came  and  looked  at  Christophers  ticket  and  opened 
the  door  for  him  when  the  train  came  in.  There  was  nobody 
in  the  carriage.  Everybody  in  the  train  was  asleep.  In  the 
fields  all  was  asleep.  Only  Christophe  did  not  sleep  in 
spite  of  his  weariness.  As  the  heavy  iron  wheels  approached 
the  frontier  he  felt  a fearful  longing  to  be  out  of  reach.  In 
an  hour  he  would  be  free.  But  till  then  a word  would  be 
enough  to  have  him  arrested.  . . . Arrested!  His  whole 

being  revolted  at  the  word.  To  be  stifled  by  odious  force ! 
. . . He  could  not  breathe.  His  mother,  his  country,  that 

he  was  leaving,  were  no  longer  in  his  thoughts.  In  the  egoism 
of  his  threatened  liberty  he  thought  only  of  that  liberty  of  his 
life  which  he  wished  to  save.  Whatever  it  might  cost ! Even 
at  the  cost  of  crime.  He  was  bitterly  sorry  that  he  had  taken 
the  train  instead  of  continuing  the  journey  to  the  frontier  on 
foot.  He  had  wanted  to  gain  a few  hours.  A fine  gain!  He 
was  throwing  himself  into  the  jaws  of  the  wolf.  Surely  they 
were  waiting  for  him  at  the  frontier  station;  orders  must  have 
been  given;  he  would  be  arrested.  . . . He  thought  for  a 

moment  of  leaving  the  train  while  it  was  moving,  before  it 
reached  the  station;  he  even  opened  the  door  of  the  carriage, 
but  it  was  too  late;  the  train  was  at  the  station.  It  stopped. 
Eive  minutes.  An  eternity.  Christophe  withdrew  to  the  end  of 
the  compartment  and  hid  behind  the  curtain  and  anxiously 
watched  the  platform  on  which  a gendarme  was  standing  mo- 
tionless. The  station  master  came  out  of  his  oSice  with  a tele- 
gram in  his  hand  and  went  hurriedly  up  to  the  gendarme.  Chris- 
tophe had  no  doubt  that  it  was  about  himself.  He  looked  for  a 
weapon.  He  had  only  a strong  knife  with  two  blades.  He 
opened  it  in  his  pocket.  An  official  with  a lamp  on  his  chest 
had  passed  the  station  master  and  was  running  along  the  train. 
Christophe  saw  him  coming.  His  fist  closed  on  the  handle  of 
the  knife  in  his  pocket  and  he  thought : 

I am  lost.^^ 

He  was  in  such  a state  of  excitement  that  he  would  have 
been  capable  of  plunging  the  knife  into  the  man^s  breast  if  he 
had  been  unfortunate  enough  to  come  straight  to  him  and  open 
his  compartment.  But  the  official  stopp.ed  at  the  next  carriage 


EEVOLT 


595 


to  look  at  the  ticket  of  a passenger  who  Had  just  taken  his 
seat.  The  train  moved  on  again.  Christophe  repressed  the 
throbbing  of  his  heart.  He  did  not  stir.  He  dared  hardly  say  to 
himself  that  he  was  saved.  He  would  not  say  it  until  he  had 
crossed  the  frontier.  . . . Day  was  beginning  to  dawn.  The 

silhouettes  of  the  trees  were  starting  out  of  the  night.  A car- 
riage was  passing  on  the  road  like  a fantastic  shadow  with  a 
jingle  of  bells  and  a winking  eye.  . . . With  his  face  close 

pressed  to  the  window  Christophe  tried  to  see  the  post  with  the 
imperial  arms  which  marked  the  bounds  of  his  servitude.  He 
was  still  looking  for  it  in  the  growing  light  when  the  train 
whistled  to  announce  its  arrival  at  the  first  Belgian  station. 

He  got  up,  opened  the  door  wide,  and  drank  in  the  icy  air. 
Free!  His  whole  life  before  him!  The  joy  of  life!  . . . 

And  at  once  there  came  upon  him  suddenly  all  the  sadness 
of  what  he  was  leaving,  all  the  sadness  of  what  he  was  going 
to  meet;  and  he  was  overwhelmed  by  the  fatigue  of  that  night 
of  emotion.  He  sank  down  on  the  seat.  He  had  hardly  been 
in  the  station  a minute.  When  a minute  later  an  official  opened 
the  door  of  the  carriage  he  found  Christophe  asleep.  Chris- 
tophe awoke,  dazed,  thinking  he  had  been  asleep  an  hour ; he  got 
out  heavily  and  dragged  himself  to  the  customs,  and  when  he 
was  definitely  accepted  on  foreign  territory,  having  no  more  to 
defend  himself,  he  lay  down  along  a seat  in  the  waiting  room 
and  dropped  off  and  slept  like  a log. 

He  awoke  about  noon.  Lorchen  could  hardly  come  before 
two  or  three  o’clock.  While  he  was  waiting  for  the  trains  he 
walked  up  and  down  the  platform  of  the  little  station.  Then 
he  went  straight  on  into  the  middle  of  the  fields.  It  was  a 
gray  and  joyless  day  giving  warning  of  the  approach  of  winter. 
The  light  was  dim.  The  plaintive  whistle  of  a train  stopping 
was  all  that  broke  the  melancholy  silence.  Christophe  stopped 
a few  yards  away  from  the  frontier  in  the  deserted  country. 
Before  him  was  a little  pond,  a clear  pool  of  water,  in  which 
the  gloomy  sky  was  refiected.  It  was  inclosed  by  a fence  and 
two  trees  grew  by  its  side.  On  the  right,  a poplar  with  leafless 
trembling  top.  Behind, -a  great  walnut  tree  with  black  naked 


596 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


branches  like  a monstrous  polypus.  The  black  fruit  of  it  swung  t 
heavily  on  it.  The  last  withered  leaves  were  decaying  and  fall-  ■ 
ing  one  by  one  upon  the  still  pond.  ...  | 

It  seemed  to  him  that  he  had  already  seen  them,  the  two  | 
trees,  the  pond  . . . — and  suddenly  he  had  one  of  those  I 

moments  of  giddiness  which  open  great  distances  in  the  plain  J 
of  life.  A chasm  in  Time.  He  knew  not  where  he  was,  who  s 
he  was,  in  what  age  he  lived,  through  how  many  ages  he  had  (. 
been  so.  Christophe  had  a feeling  that  it  had  already  been,  ^ 
that  what  was,  now,  was  not,  now,  but  in  some  other  time.  He  - 
was  no  longer  himself.  He  was  able  to  see  himself  from  out-  , 
side,  from  a great  distance,  as  though  it  were  some  one  else  _ 
standing  there  in  that  place.  He  heard  the  buzzing  of  memory  z 
and  of  an  unknown  creature  within  himself ; the  blood  boiled  in  , 
his  veins  and  roared: 

" Thus  . . . Thus  . . . Thus  . . 

The  centuries  whirled  through  him.  . . >.  Many  other  . 
Ejaffts  had  passed  through  the  experiences  which  were  his  on  j 
that  day,  and  had  tasted  the  wretchedness  of  'the  last  hour  on  ■' 
their  native  soil.  A wandering  race,  banished  everywhere  for  't 
their  independence  and  disturbing  qualities.  A race  always  | 
the  prey  of  an  inner  demon  that  never  let  it  settle  anywhere.  ;; 
A race  attached  to  the  soil  from  which  it  was  torn,  and  never,  i; 

never  ceasing  to  love  it.  ' 

Christophe  in  his  turn  was  passing  through  these  same  sor-  ; 
rowful  experiences;  and  he  was  finding  on  the  way  the  footsteps  | 
of  those  who  had  gone  before  him.  With  tears  in  his  eyes  he  - 
watched  his  native  land  disappear  in  the  mist,  his  country  to  ' 
which  he  had  to  say  farewell. — ^Had  he  not  ardently  desired  to  | 
leave  it? — ^Yes;  but  now  that  he  was  actually  leaving  it  he  felt 
himself  racked  by  anguish.  Only  a brutish  heart  can  part 
without  emotion  from  the  motherland.  Happy  or  unhappy  he  ■ 
had  lived  with  her;  she  was  his  mother  and  his  comrade;  he 
had  slept  in  her,  he  had  slept  on  her  bosom,  he  was  impregnated 
with  her;  in  her  bosom  she  held  the  treasure  of  his  dreams,  all 
his  past  life,  the  sacred  dust  of  those  whom  he  had  loved.  Chns- 
tophe  saw  now  in  review  the  days  of  his  life,  and  the  dear  men  J 
and  women  whom  he  was  leaving  on  that  soil  or  beneath  it.  His  | 
sufferings  were  not  less  dear  to  him  than  his  joys.  Minna,  | 


EEVOLT 


597 


Sabine,  Ada,  his  grandfather,  IJncle  Gottfried,  old  Schulz — all 
passed  before  him  in  the  space  of  a few  minutes.  He  could  not 
tear  himself  away  from  the  dead — (for  he  counted  Ada  also 
among  the  dead) — -the  idea  of  his  mother  whom  he  was  leaving, 
the  only  living  creature  of  all  those  whom  he  loved,  among  these 
phantoms  was  intolerable  to  him. 

He  was  almost  on  the  point  of  crossing  the  frontier  again, 
so  cowardly  did  his  flight  seem  to  him.  He  made  up  his  mind 
that  if  the  answer  Lorchen  was  to  bring  him  from  his  mother 
betrayed  too  great  grief  he  would  return  at  all  costs.  But  if 
he  received  nothing?  If  Lorchen  had  not  been  able  to  reach 
Louisa,  or  to  bring  back  the  answer?  Well,  he  would  go  back. 

He  returned  to  the  station.  After  a grim  time  of  waiting  the 
train  at  last  appeared.  Christophe  expected  to  see  Lorchen^s 
bold  face  in  the  train;  for  he  was  sure  she  would  keep  her 
promise;  but  she  did  not  appear.  He  ran  anxiously  from  one 
compartment  to  another;  he  said  to  himself  that  if  she  had  b^en 
in  the  train  she  would  have  been  one  of  the  first  to  get  out. 
As  he  was  plunging  through  the  stream  of  passengers  coming 
from  the  opposite  direction  he  saw  a face  which  he  seemed  to 
know.  It  was  the  face  of  a little  girl  of  thirteen  or  fourteen, 
chubby,  dimpled,  and  ruddy  as  an  apple,  with  a little  turned-up 
nose  and  a large  mouth,  and  a thick  plait  coiled  around  her 
head.  As  he  looked  more  closely  at  her  he  saw  that  she  had 
in  her  hand  an  old  valise  very  much  like  his  own.  She  was 
watching  him  too  like  a sparrow;  and  when  she  saw  that  he 
was  looking  at  her  she  came  towards  him;  but  she  stood  firmly 
in  front  of  Christophe  and  stared  at  him  with  her  little  mouse- 
like eyes,  without  speaking  a word.  Christophe  knew  her;  she 
was  a little  milkmaid  at  Lorchen’s  farm.  Pointing  to  the  valise 
he  said: 

That  is  mine,  isn^t  it  ? 

The  girl  did  not  move  and  replied  cunningly: 

I’m  not  sure.  Where  do  you  come  from,  first  of  all  ? 

Buir.” 

And  who  sent  it  you  ? ” 

Lorchen.  Come.  Give  it  me.” 

The  little  girl  held  out  the  valise. 

There  it  is.” 


598 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


And  she  added:  ^ 

“ Oh!  But  I knew  you  at  once!”  ^ 

“ What  were  you  waiting  for  then  ? ” 

I was  waiting  for  you  to  tell  nie  that  it  was  you. 

" And  Lorchen?  ” asked  Christophe.  “ Why  didn’t  she  come?” 

The  girl  did  not  reply.  Christophe  understood  that  she  did 
not  want  to  say  anything  among  all  the  people.  They  had  first 
to  pass  through  the  customs.  When  that  was  done  Christophe 
took  the  girl  to  the  end  of  the  platform : 

" The  police  came,”  said  the  girl,  now  very  talkative.  They 
came  almost  as  soon  as  you  had  gone.  They  went  into  all  the 
houses.  They  questioned  everybody,  and  they  arrested  big  Sami 
and  Christian  and  old  Kaspar.  And  also  Melanie  and  ^r- 
trude,  though  they  declared  thej^  had  done  nothing,  and  they 
wept;  and  Gertrude  scratched  the  gendarmes.  It  was  not 
any  good  then  saying  that  you  had  done  it  all.” 

“I?”  exclaimed  Christophe. 

“ Oh ! yes,”  said  the  girl  quietly.  “ It  was  no  good  as  you 
had  gone.  Then  they  looked  for  you  everywhere  and  hunted 
for  you  in  every  direction.” 

“ And  Lorchen  ? ” , j /a 

“Lorchen  was  not  there.  She  came  hack  afterwards  after 

she  had  been  to  the  town.” 

“ Did  she  see  my  mother  ? ” 

" Yes.  Here  is  the  letter.  And  she  wanted  to  come  herself, 
but  she  was  arrested  too.” 

“ How  did  you  manage  to  come  ? ” 

" Well,  she  came  back  to  the  village  without  being  seen  by 
the  police,  and  she  was  going  to  set  out  again.  But  Irmina, 
Gertrude’s  sister,  denounced  her.  They  came  to  arre^  her. 
Then  when  she  saw  the  gendarmes  coming  she  went  up  to  her 
room  and  shouted  that  she  would  come  down  in  a minute,  that 
she  was  dressing.  I was  in  the  vineyard  behind  the  house;  she 
called  to  me  from  the  window:  ‘Lydia!  Lydia. 
her;  she  threw  down  your  valise  and  the  letter  v^ich  your 
mother  had  given  her,  and  she  explained  where  I should  find 
you.  I ran,  and  here  I am.” 

“Didn’t  she  say  anything  more?” 


EEVOLT 


599 


“ Yes.  She  told  me  to  give  you  this  shawl  to  show  you  that 
I came  from  her.” 

Christophe  recognized  the  white  shawl  with  red  spots  and 
embroidered  flowers  which  Lorchen  had  tied  round  her  head 
when  she  left  him  on  the  night  before.  The  naive  improbability 
of  the  excuse  she  had  made  for  sending  him  such  a love-token 
did  not  make  him  smile. 

“ Now,”  said  the  girl,  “ here  is  the  return  train.  I must  go 
home.  Good-night.” 

“ Wait,”  said  Christophe.  “ And  the  fare,  what  did  you  do 
about  that?” 

“ Lorchen  gave  it  me.” 

“ Take  this,”  said  Christophe,  pressing  a few  pieces  of  money 
into  her  hand. 

He  held  her  back  as  she  was  trying  to  go. 

“ And  then  . . .”  he  said. 

He  stooped  and  kissed  her  cheeks.  The  girl  affected  to  pro- 
test. 

"Don’t  mind,”  said  Christophe  jokingly.  "It  was  not  tor 
you/^ 

" Oh ! I know  that,”  said  the  girl  mockingly.  “ It  was  for 

Lorchen.”  i_  i • j 

It  was  not  only  Lorchen  that  Christophe  kissed  as  he  kissed 

the  little  milkmaid’s  chubby  cheeks;  it  was  all  Germany.  ^ 

The  girl  slipped  away  and  ran  towards  the  train  which  was 
just  going.  She  hung  out  of  the  window  and  waved  her  hand- 
kerchief to  him  until  she  was  out  of  sight.  He  followed  with 
his  eyes  the  rustic  messenger  who  had  brought  him  for  the 
last  time  the  breath  of  his  country  and  of  those  he  loved. 

When  she  had  gone  he  found  himself  utterly  alone,  this  time, 
a stranger  in  a strange  land.  He  had  in  his  hand  his  mother  s 
letter  and  the  shawl  love-token.  He  pressed  the  shawl  to  his 
breast  and  tried  to  open  the  letter.  But  his  hands  trembled. 
What  would  he  find  in  it  ? What  suffering  would  be  written  in 
it? — No;  he  could  not  bear  the  sorrowful  words  of  reproach 
which  already  he  seemed  to  hear ; he  would  retrace  his  steps. 

At  last  he  unfolded  the  letter  and  read:  " My  poor  child, 

do  not  be  anxious  about  me.  I will  be  wise.  God  has  punished 


600 


JEAN-CHEISTOPHE 


me.  I must  not  be  selfish  and  keep  you  here.  Go  to  Paris. 
Perhaps  it  will  be  better  for  you.  Do  not  worry  about  me.  I 
can  manage  somehow.  The  chief  thing  is  that  you  should  be 
happy.  I kiss  you.  Mother. 

“ Write  to  me  when  you  can.” 

Christophe  sat  down  on  his  valise  and  wept. 

The  porter  was  shouting  the  train  for  Paris. 

The  heavy  train  was  slowing  down  with  a terrific  noise.  Chris- 
tophe dried  his  tears,  got  up  and  said: 

“ I must  go.” 

He  looked  at  the  sky  in  the  direction  in  which  Paris  mu!«t 
be.  The  sky,  dark  everywhere,  was  even  darker  there.  It  was 
like  a dark  chasm.  Christophe’s  heart  ached,  but  he  said  again : 

"I  must  go.” 

He  climbed  into  the  train  and  leaning  out  of  the  window 
went  on  looking  at  the  menacing  horizon: 

“ 0,  Paris ! ” he  thought,  “ Paris ! Come  to  my  aid ! Save 
me ! Save  my  thoughts ! ” | 

The  thick  fog  grew  denser  still.  Behind  Christophe,  above  | 

the  country  he  was  leaving,  a little  .patch  of  sky,  pale  blue,  i 

large,  like  two  eyes — ^like  the  eyes  of  Sabine — smiled  sorrowfully  ' 

through  the  heavy  veil  of  clouds  and  then  was  gone.  The  train 
departed.  Rain  fell.  Night  fell. 


